Build Stronger Financial Futures with Health Care Planning

portrait of Christine Simone
Simone
Christine Simone is the CEO & co-founder of Caribou, a software solution for the finance industry to include health care costs and plan optimization in financial plans.

It’s a top expense and source of stress.

By Christine Simone
The Holistic Guide to Wealth Management

Financial advisors are well suited to help clients with all the important decisions in their lives. But that doesn’t mean advisors always recognize the areas in which clients need the most help.

MORE: Marketing Strategies for Wealth Management Services | Trust Is the Primary Ingredient | How to Prepare Your Clients’ Kids for Their Inheritance | Annuities and Insurance Growing More Attractive | Quantifying the Value of an Advisor | Raise Your Rates to Change Your Clientele | How WealthTech Is Reshaping the Future of Holistic Advice | Profile of a Modern Firm: Putting the Vision into Practice | Tsunami of M&A, PE Is Disrupting the Accounting Profession | Introducing You to a Fulfilling Return on Relationships
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Take health insurance, a big concern for people across all income groups. According to a 2021 report from Spectrem Group (now part of CEG Insights), two-thirds of affluent investors (65%) say they want their advisors to help them with health insurance, but only 4 percent said their financial advisors are providing it to them (see bar chart). Further, among people who don’t have financial advisors, the top areas for which they would want guidance are retirement income planning, Social Security planning and Medicare advice.
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How to Price and Package Advisory Services

Hand moving triangle along beam to indicate balance between price and value

Three reasons that hourly billing fails.

By Hitendra Patil
Client Accounting Services: The Definitive Success Guide

For decades, hourly billing was the primary pricing method in the accounting industry. Charging based on time seemed fair and simple. However, as your firm shifts into Advisory-CAS (Client Accounting Services), that model starts to show its flaws.

MORE by Hitendra Patil
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Why? Advisory services focus on the impact and outcomes they provide, with time becoming less of a priority. If a CPA firm partner spends 45 minutes advising a business owner and that conversation prevents a six-figure mistake, what is that advice worth? Much more than what a typical $200/hour rate suggests. In this case, the time spent is less important than the value provided.
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Ira Rosenbloom: PE Forces Firms to Pick a Future | The Disruptors

PE makes CPA firms rethink strategy – even if they don’t want to sell.

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Sponsored by True Advisor: The Definitive Success Guide for Client Advisory Services by Hitendra Patil
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The Disruptors
With Liz Farr
For CPA Trendlines

With private equity becoming “a real player and a disruptor in the marketplace,” Ira Rosenbloom, CEO of Optimum Strategies, says, the dramatic influx of capital is intensifying competition for quality firms, especially those with strong client bases and growth potential.

MORE DISRUPTORS: Candy Bellau: The $350 Pricing Mistake that Nearly Broke this Boutique Firm | The Disruptors | Poe: What P.E. Really Wants from Firms | The Disruptors  | Blake Oliver: Build a Biz that Runs Without You | Daiber: Use Succession as a Growth Strategy | Cannon: Busy Season is Self-Inflicted | Carroll: When One Person Can Break the FirmRampe: Build a Roadmap Even When the Road’s Not There | Chang: Killing SALY, One Agent at a Time |

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Firms that PE wouldn’t touch are now being approached by brokers without accounting industry experience, hired by PE groups striving to “build an engine,” Rosenbloom says. But the unwanted attention has “helped some of the smaller firms quickly decide they don’t want to go down that path.” So they “take themselves out of the running for a PE situation quicker because of a better understanding of what private equity wants,” he explains.

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One Hundred Clients, One Advisor

arrow breaks glass ceiling

Break the capacity ceiling in advisory.

By Eric Eager
10X Advisory

There’s a silent ceiling in most CPA firms that stalls advisory growth – and it’s not demand. It’s capacity.

Most firms max out around six to 10 advisory clients per advisor. That’s it. After that, quality starts to suffer. Conversations get delayed. Prep work takes over. And advisory becomes just another thing on the to-do list.

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But what if it didn’t have to be that way?

What if your advisors could serve 10X more clients – without burning out or cutting corners?
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Nancy McClelland: Bookkeepers Need a Safe Space to Collaborate | The Disruptors

Bookkeepers often feel less empowered than tax professionals.

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Sponsored by True Advisor

 

Build a 7-figure firm in just 4 hours a week!

The Disruptors
With Liz Farr
For CPA Trendlines

Nancy McClelland wants to do more than just run her firm, The Dancing Accountant. She has two big passion projects that are creating the conversations and collaborations this profession desperately needs. Her community, Ask a CPA, aims to bridge the gap between bookkeepers and tax professionals. She also co-hosts a podcast with Questian Telka, She Counts, which provides a safe space for women in accounting to discuss real issues.

MORE STREAMING: Cannon: Busy Season is Self-InflictedCarroll: When One Person Can Break the FirmRampe: Build a Roadmap Even When the Road’s Not ThereChang: Killing SALY, One Agent at a Time | Vanover: 5-Star Firms Don’t Bill by the HourKless: Profit Is a Result. Flourishing Is the Purpose | Whitman: Build Culture on ‘Progress,’ Not Change | Shein: No PE? No M&A? No Problem | Hood and Weber: Time to RISEProctor: Turn Dumb Ideas into Brilliant SolutionsCarter-Gray: How 1 Poor Review Strengthened the Firm | Hartman: Upwork to “40 Under 40” in 3 Years |

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McClelland started the Ask a CPA Community when she noticed “this big gap that wasn’t about technical knowledge. It was about permission, about permission to collaborate.” While “bookkeepers are often the closest person to the financial truth of a business,” historically, “they’ve been positioned as subordinate to tax preparers, just sort of expected to hand off things and hope that they did it right,” McClelland explains.

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