Category: Bob Veres’ Blog

I always find it interesting how a scandal, even a major one, fades so quickly from the attention of the press and the collective attention of consumers.  These scandals are, at heart, a test of character—and what is more important to know about a broker or company you plan to do business with than their character?   Shouldn’t a scandal like selling junk mortgages as prime paper to unsuspecting investors, or allowing preferred customers bet against the investments you’ve sold to (presumably) less-important customers?  Or allowing hedge funds to trade ahead of your mutual fund customers?  Or publishing research reports…

I just got back from a trip to the future.  Yes, it was pretty darned expensive, but I spare no expense for my readers.  Plus, hey, this is the 400th issue of Inside Information.  I wanted to celebrate a little. My guide was a financial planner who specializes in working on the finances of asteroid miners.  “Their hot button issue is specialized life insurance and disability coverage,” he told me.  “But we also have their wills and powers of attorney in place so that if something happens up there, somebody can handle their finances until they recover.” “What about managing their…

I suspect that brokerage industry lobbyists are the only people who want to explain why there are very strict (ERISA) standards for managing and advising pension plan assets, while the standards for advising taxable portfolios are so lax they might fairly be compared to the Wild West.  There are no comparable laws against salespeople—including wirehouse brokers (AKA ‘Vice Presidents of Investments’)—selling expensive products, self-dealing or holding themselves out as professional advisors even if their only qualification is a couple of weeks of sales training.   Since the turn of the century, the financial planning profession has been lobbying for more and…

I just got off the phone with Arnulf Hsu, founder of GReminders, one of the pioneering note-taking solutions.  The interview was about all the other (non-note-taking) features that GReminders is adding, just like Jump and Zephyr.  We talked about some of the other programs that are being built on AI, including Slant (the first CRM built entirely on AI) and the new Advyzon financial planning system (also built entirely on AI), vs. something like Verlo (to be profiled in a future issue) that aims at becoming a jack-of-all-trades AI agent that is trained to work as a back office staffer. As…

1) Calling yourself a ‘wealth manager.’  Why?  Because even wealthy people don’t think of themselves that way.  If you tell the world, in your marketing and on your website, that you are a wealth manager, you’re positioning yourself as somebody who works with people other than whoever is finding you on the web. A good way to stand out is to put, somewhere on your website, that you provide financial advice and expertise to regular people.  That’s how even the wealthiest people see themselves. 2) Surprising prospects with a greatly expanded scope of the requested engagement.  A prospect knocks on…

With everything else going on in the world, you might have missed the recent demise of the Department of Labor’s latest fiduciary rule (labeled by some the Fiduciary Rule 2.0).  This is at least the third attempt by the DOL to impose fiduciary standards on product salespeople, brokers and agents who recommend investments and rollovers into and from qualified plans.   Are the sales agents who move assets out of 401(k) plans (whose assets are protected by ERISA’s fiduciary standards) required to live up to fiduciary standards as they touch the money on the way out?  Can sales agents earn…

The lead article in this issue of Inside Information talks about all the marvelous new capabilities of AI in our fintech space, and it’s fair to wonder how far that will go.  Hey, Alexa, play some of my favorite Taylor Swift songs, and then please look at my income and last year’s tax statement, and check out my IRA balance.  Do you think I should do a Roth conversion this year, and if so, how much should I convert to fill up our 24% tax bracket based on your best estimate of our taxable income this year? Yes, I do…

There’s a particular article that we’re going to be seeing all over the consumer press ten or so years in the future (maybe less!), which will firmly slam shut a barn door long after the horses and cows have headed off for the fields.  In the interests of being helpful, I offer this template article that future consumer press editors and writers can use, saving themselves a lot of time and effort.  (They can thank me later.) Headline: Investors Regret their Allocations to Mass-Marketed Alternative Investments. Subhead: Despite big name management firms and sparkling prior track records, private equity, private…