Financial advisors and clients among Generations X and Y are the future of the profession, and the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors and XY Planning Network (XYPN) on Tuesday announced they’ve partnered to help build a pipeline of next-generation advisors interested in serving Gen X and Y investors.
Gen X is roughly defined as people born between 1965 and the early 1980s, while Gen Y is roughly defined as those born between the early ‘80s through 2000. Many advisors in those age brackets have entered the business––or are growing up in the business––differently than their older peers (less cold calling, less commission-based selling, more fee-based models and greater demand for independence, among other things). And some of them are looking for a different way to run their practice.
Meanwhile, Gen X and Y investors––particularly the latter––typically don’t have enough assets to be served by advisor firms with high investment minimums.
“Our vision is to provide a path that lets Gen X and Y planners start a financial planning business serving their peers, and working with them for an affordable monthly fee and without any need for products,” Michael Kitces, co-founder of XYPN, said in a press release.
Kitces, research director at Pinnacle Advisory Group in Columbia, Md., co-founded XYPN this spring with Alan Moore, a financial planner and founder of Serenity Financial Consulting in Milwaukee and Bozeman, Mont.
XYPN offers a turnkey financial planning platform to help young advisors start, manage, and grow their fee-only financial planning firm by using a monthly retainer model that lets them work with clients in their peer group.
XYPN says it provides member advisors with compliance support, marketing training, technology, peer-to-peer networking and relevant education. And it believes the monthly retainer model also helps ensure an ongoing relationship that makes financial planning a consistent part of clients’ lives.
“We wanted to provide a place where young advisors could come to start their own firm, instead of getting pulled into product sales and eventually run out of the profession,” Moore said.
Napfa CEO Geoffrey Brown said his organization’s partnership with XYPN creates natural synergies between the two groups and positions Napfa to help influence advisors serving the next generation of clients. Napfa represents more than 2,500 fee-only financial planners across the U.S.