In another session, Betsy Brill, co-founder of Strategic Philanthropy in Chicago, said advisors need to help clients think about philanthropy and define their goals, but they should also provide their clients with the information they need to help carry out their wishes.
Jennifer Klein Strauss, an attorney with the Houston-based law firm Ytterberg Deery Knull who appeared on the panel with Brill, noted that evolving tax codes mean it’s incumbent on advisors to keep up with the latest rules on charitable giving. Those include the sunset dates on which some of the tax and estate law changes made in the recent reform will revert back to pre-2018 law.
One of the sessions focused on a couple of issues that are germane to the younger breed of financial planners—serving younger clients and operating their businesses in a newfangled way that suits them. “What I’ve noticed in the industry is that [the] sentiment is kind of like, ‘We don’t really want to get involved with the younger generation—they don’t have money,’” said Heather Townsend, who runs her practice from Kirkland, Wash. Her take is that advisors should want to on-board their clients’ children, especially if those children stand to inherit their parents’ wealth.
Townsend runs a virtual practice that works with clients in their 20s and 40s across the U.S. “Millennials want to leave this corporate 9 to 5; they want to be free and they want to travel,” she said.
She and other panelists—Helen Ngo, CEO of Capital Benchmark Partners and Made Modern Money in Atlanta, and Winnie Sun, the co-founder and managing director of Sun Group Wealth Partners in Irvine, Calif.—said social media is their marketing tool of choice. Townsend noted she doesn’t have official social media accounts, but she doesn’t mind clients following her personal Instagram account.
All three said their practices are practically all-digital, because their clients communicate, make payments and arrange their lives through online platforms. Sun’s phone barely rings anymore, she said, since clients have the option of reaching out to her on whatever social media platform they feel comfortable with.
But more accessibility doesn’t necessarily mean frequent direct communication, said Ngo. She uses the virtual assistant application Schedule Once to set parameters around her schedule. Sun said chat bots are a way to handle minor things such as frequently asked questions.