Q: We know you are a CPA who works in the retirement planning space. What aspects of your work drove you to the RISA ?
A: I don’t know if you have ever had the experience of hearing something for the first time and knowing it was going to change your life, but this is what happened to me after attending a webinar where Wade explained the RISA. Over the last 5 years I have been diligently implementing into my practice the best ideas I could find in the retirement planning space. But one of the areas I continued to struggle with is that the retirement plans that were being provided by most advisors were primarily driven by the biases of the advisors and companies they represent rather than learning what the client really wanted and helping them to achieve it. The RISA finally gave me the opportunity to make my clients the boss of their own retirement.
Q: How do you implement the RISA within your scope of work?
A: We initially started using it as part of our onboarding process with new clients, but we have expanded the use of the RISA into many of our marketing efforts to attract new clients. It drives everything we do at this point. After scheduling an appointment with us, it is the next thing we ask potential clients to complete, and it is the first thing we review in our initial meeting. We then let it and our retirement risk tolerance assessment govern everything we do from that point on.
Q: You recently mentioned that you started seeing the effects of the RISA with your clients. Can you give us a general idea of what it has done for them?
A: Yes. In addition to doing risk-based retirement planning myself, I also generate leads for other advisors who use my company as their back office. Part of our responsibility is to follow up on people who have stopped moving forward with the advisors we generate leads for. One of the services we offer in our follow up process is to have the client meet with me to see if I can get them back on track. Since being introduced to the RISA, I now require those who choose to meet with me to complete the RISA before our meeting. What I have found 100% of the time is the reason people are not moving forward with their advisor is because the advisor was not matching the clients’ money with their profile. Once I used the RISA to explain this to the client, I have had the majority of these lost clients choose to reengage us to get their plan where it should be.
Q: Has administering the RISA made an impact on how you feel about your own ability to help clients with their financial choices? If so, what difference has it made in your role as a risk-based retirement advisor?
A: Yes, it has become the crystal ball that allows me to see those I get the opportunity to work with in a way other advisors can’t because they are more focused on themselves then the client. There have been a number of times throughout my life that I have chosen to diet to better control my weight. If you have ever gone through the process or know of someone who has, you know there are a lot of different options out there to lose weight. Some of these options include meal replacement, low calorie, high protein, low carb and the list goes on. And what you will also find is any one of these diets can be successful, but there is one diet that beats them all. That diet is the Mediterranean Diet. Why is it so successful? Because it does the best job of allowing for a much larger variety of food options, which falls more in line with how most of us eat. Retirement is the same way. There are many ways to get through retirement, but the one that will work best for you is the one that best matches your profile.
Q: What appeals to you about the RISA?
A: My desire to be able to build custom plans for my clients. The financial service industry works a lot like the home building industry. You have advisors who have a hammer and every client need is a nail. You have advisors who only build track homes. You have a few options to pick from for your retirement, but when it comes down to it there are really only three or four options to choose from and they have all been preset by the advisor. You have advisors who are semi-custom builders. These advisors make you feel like there is flexibility in your retirement, but when it comes down to the key aspects of your retirement, such as the size of the land, or the size of the building these decisions have already been determined by the advisor. And now you have the new paradigm advisors who use the RISA to build custom homes. These advisors don’t know what the plan is going to look like until the client tells them what they are trying to build.
Q: You recently mentioned that you started seeing the effects of the RISA with your clients. Can you give us a general idea of what it has done for them?
A: Yes. It has allowed some of our clients to better understand why they have struggled for years with various aspects of their prior retirement plans. In fact, recently we had a new client complete a RISA and they came back showing they valued optionality over commitment. As we reviewed their plan, what we found is they had five permanent life insurance policies that were all going to lapse because the client hadn’t stayed true to their premium schedule. The RISA helped me have a conversation with the client on why they felt the way they did about the policies and allow us to implement strategies to save them tens of thousands of dollars in cash value that is still in these policies.
Q: What has been the biggest take-away so far in using the RISA?
A: It’s ability to help us create custom plans for our clients that they love and understand.
Q: What would you tell other CPAs who are considering subscribing to the RISA?A: You can’t live without it if you are serious about doing the right thing for your clients. There is no other tool out there that can do so much in helping you guide your clients to retirement success.
