As with any service area, it’s important to have a solid process in place. Without one, it can be a little bit like the Wild West! The 401(k) audit process involves six stages, which are typically completed within four to eight weeks.
Once a prospective client confirms they want Summit to complete their audit, we send them the engagement letter and the questionnaires along with the governance planning memo that we’re required to give them. READ MORE →
David Lau is the founder and CEO of DPL Financial Partners, a privately held financial services firm that specializes in the development and distribution of low-cost, commission-free insurance and annuity products, for registered investment advisors (RIAs) and individual investors.
Perceptions are changing … and rightfully so.
By David Lau, founder and CEO of DPL Financial Partners,and Ross McGoodwin, regional vice president at DPL Financial Partners The Holistic Guide to Wealth Management
After the stock market swooned (-22% S&P 500) and the majority of bond indices suffered double-digit losses in 2022, protection and income solutions are at the forefront of planning discussions. Instead of these principal protection and income solutions being offered only by commission-based agents, however, now they can be offered by fiduciaries for planning discussions and appropriate implementation.
According to LIMRA (Life Insurance Marketing and Research Association), retail annuity sales in 2022 shattered the annual sales records set during the global financial crisis of 2008. For instance, fixed-rate deferred annuities totaled $113 billion, more than double the sales in 2021, LIMRA reported. CD alternatives, such as fixed-rate deferred annuities, provide security and tax-deferred growth. I have found this helps clients guarantee upside return, something they are actively seeking after one of the worst years in combined equity and bond performance since World War II. I’ve also found that fee-only options will provide higher rates compared to traditional, commission-based solutions. READ MORE →
Today’s Bissett Bullet: “Confirming the details of your meeting with a prospective client after a meeting is set up is not a formality. It is a cancellation prevention exercise.”
By Martin Bissett
This is a small gesture but is still the standout way to ensure that you are in their schedule, in their calendar, in their diary for this meeting. It shows maturity, it shows seriousness, it shows that you are “on the ball.” Always confirm in writing after setting up a meeting because that is the most proven cancellation prevention exercise yet. Make it official.
Today’s To-Do:
Develop a very simple confirmation letter template that you can send out easily or that someone can send out on your behalf when each new prospective meeting is confirmed in your diary.
Student-Led Conversations opens its second season with a conversation that reflects a larger shift underway in the accounting profession: rapid technology change, accelerating adoption of artificial intelligence tools, and an increasing push to bring younger voices into the discussion.
Arpan Grewal, a Center for Accounting Transformation intern and business student in Indiana, welcomes Liz Mason, CPA, CEO of High Rock Accounting, as the first guest of Season 2. Grewal describes the discussion as “full circle,” noting Mason is among the first professionals she interviewed when Student-Led Conversations launched last year.
Mason, a co-host of Accounting ARC, argues the profession is no longer talking about incremental change. It is, she says, in the early stages of something much larger.
The word that continues to surface for her is “revolution.”
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