What’s behind advisors’ newly positive economic outlook? Plus, year-end M&A trends. And strategies to connect with affluent clients of all ages
Financial Planning
The leading resource of news, data and analysis for the wealth management industry.
RETIREMENT: Just in time for the holidays, retirement advisors are suddenly feeling a lot better about the U.S. economy.
The latest data from Arizent's Retirement Advisor Confidence Outlook (RACO) shows a dramatic rise in wealth managers' economic optimism. Scores were up across the board, measuring everything from client risk tolerance to government policy. The jump indicates that the improvement seen last month, when the outlook score rose from negative-21.35 to negative-17.6, was not just a fluke, but the beginning of a longer upswing. In their answers to RACO's survey, many advisors expressed a cautious hope that the economy was heading in the right direction.
MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS: Wealth management M&A momentum is accelerating at the end of 2023, as the macroeconomic headwinds that threw dealmaking off its previous record-breaking pace recede into calmer air.
For an overview of industry M&A trends on the cusp of the new year, Financial Planning gathered the latest news involving firms like Osaic, Focus Financial Partners, Cetera Financial Group and Creative Planning and spoke with: Katie Bruner , the president of the holding company that owns SkyView Partners, an investment bank that provides advice and capital for registered investment advisory firms undertaking successions, acquisitions and refinancing; and Brent Brodeski , founder and CEO of Rockford, Illinois-based Savant Wealth Management, the No. 7 firm on FP's RIA Leaders ranking of the largest fee-only RIAs in the country with more than $17 billion in advisory assets.
PRACTICE AND CLIENT MANAGEMENT: For financial advisors, understanding how matters of money and matters of the mind intersect is a critical part of delivering advice clients can depend on. In an effort to better understand what makes affluent investors tick across generations, Envestnet partnered with custom research firm the Center for Generational Kinetics for a national study that attempts to simplify the complex wants and needs of some of the nation's highest earners.
We’ve got the key takeaways from the analysis, and pro tips on how to address each issue.
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