There are many business coaches out there, promising advisors help in growing their practice and bringing in more money. But do these services actually work? About two in 10 financial advisors have paid for business coaching services in the last three years; among those, 97 percent indicated that they would engage a coach again in the future, writes Russ Alan Prince on Forbes.com. “These financial advisors find they receive considerable demonstrable value from business coaches,” he says. The survey of 803 financial advisors also found that the type of advisors paying for coaching services varied. A quarter of investment managers paid for coaching, 17 percent of wealth managers shelled out for consulting, and 13 percent of financial advisors in multi-family offices paid for it.
A new white paper by Vanguard is advising financial advisors to tell their clients to delay applying for Social Security to provide longevity protection at a time when both women and men are living longer. “A big concern for most retirees is the risk of outliving their savings,” the white paper states. “For many retirees who can afford to do so, deferring Social Security for a few years ... greatly increases their lifetime monthly benefit.” Specifically, benefits increase by up to 8 percent for every year that claiming is delayed. If both members of a married couple wait until age 70 to claim Social Security, they would receive $63,360 once they started receiving the benefit, compared $48,000 if they took it starting at age 66.
UK Regulator Launches Fintech Accelerator
The U.K.’s financial regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority, launched an experimental program for financial technology companies to test their unregulated innovations in the market. The FCA said it will only admit a small number of fintech companies in order to give each an intensive amount of time and attention, and the regulator is looking for “genuinely innovative” start-ups that will both benefit consumers in the U.K. and are close to being test-ready. It’s the first tech incubator project run by a regulatory authority, and selected companies will have the added benefit of testing their projects among real consumers during a trial period when regulatory rules are set aside.
