We now have to retrace our fundamental assumptions. Do we have it right in terms of investments, AUM and financial product? Or do we need to take fresh looks? I would go with the latter.
Financial planning got its start within the world of financial products. Its critical breakthrough was when it began to address the need for different financial products from a human's perspective, not from each financial sector's.
In the past 40 years, we have seen new issues arise with the cultural transformations and makeovers in the financial services industries-and have not adapted. For many of us, it is as if physicians had stopped exploring issues of human health after learning to set bones and treat fevers. There seems to be so much worthy of more exploration.
Having long contended that financial planning is "the ultimate liberal arts profession," and a natural "learned profession," I suggest that we not operate in isolation. At a time of unprecedented crisis we must understand money liberally from the inside out, then integrate different subjects into financial planning's garden of knowledge.
This means understanding the humanities, especially history, religion and literature; the social sciences, especially economics, sociology and psychology; the physical sciences, including geology, biology, medicine, chemistry and physics; as well as business and governance and the built environment. All of these are of vital importance for understanding money and our relationship with it.
Unfortunately, there is almost no interface between academia and the financial planning profession. As near as I can tell, those teaching financial planning courses on college campuses have little to do with practicing financial planners. They do not present at our gatherings, or even attend them.
Real professions have strong ties with their academics. They have synergy. They also examine themselves, warts and all. Maybe we have to do that. Are we really "wealth managers" or "investment managers"? Are we really just in the "rate of return" business? Do we just serve a wealthy elite?
Or do we serve an elegant social fabric, helping human beings live lives better than the one described by Hobbes: "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short"? Do we instead help people live and make decisions for wealth building and prosperity, even in times of messy money?
Hyperbole? Maybe. So what? Financial planners should aspire to playing big.