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College is now the second largest purchase a family will make. Yet the college industry lacks transparency around how they price their product, leaving families unable to understand what an end price might be before committing the time and energy for the application process. Coming changes to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), the largest seen in more than a decade, give advisors an opportunity to provide additional value to their clients. It is one more touch point in the lifetime relationship between advisors and their clients. This article will cover the use of the FAFSA, the coming changes and their impact on families, and how advisors can leverage the changes to provide added value for their clients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Homophily—individuals' affinity for others like them—is a powerful principle that governs whose opinions people attend to. Using nearly 2,400 advisory meetings, we find that homophily has a significant positive impact on the likelihood of following financial advice. The increased likelihood of following stems from homophily on gender and age for male clients and from sameness on marital and parental status for female advisees. Moreover, the homophily effect is mitigated by reduced information asymmetry between client and advisor and a long-term relationship with the bank. Our results suggest that client-advisor matching increases individuals' propensity to follow financial advice. Received June 21, 2017; editorial decision June 7, 2018 by Editor Philip Strahan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last decades, several disciplines have started to investigate the heterogeneous meanings attributed to money, contributing to defying the classic vision of money as a purely neutral object through an interdisciplinary perspective. Notably, the construct of money attitude, defined as a mirror of perceptions, beliefs, and feelings about money, has captured attention. Considering the richness and fragmentation of previous literature around the construct, a systematic scoping review was conducted to (1) inquire into how money attitude was measured from a methodological perspective and (2) map its connections with key correlates, such as demographics, macro-economic factors, personality, financial practices, and job-related variables. Through a systematic search in four databases, 226 articles were selected, including studies from both economic and social sciences. From a methodological perspective, several validated scales exist, which only partially overlap, outlining the heterogeneity of the construct of money attitude. Furthermore, the relationship between money attitudes and key correlates emerges as complex and occasionally blurred. Based on these results, an integrative framework is proposed and directions for future research are outlined, discussing methodological specificities of validated scales and alternative methodologies. Additionally, overlooked topics deserving further examination are highlighted, including the investigation of emotional underpinnings of money, antecedents of money attitudes and their relationship with unsound behaviors. Implications for practitioners are also discussed, from the need to recognize the role of money attitude in the client-financial advisor relationship to the importance of consumers' segmentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advisors have developed countless ways to introduce themselves to prospective clients and describe what professional services they offer. Some introductions work well while others do not. For those advisors who are able cultivate a prospect's interest, the next step is to explain the advisor value proposition: how the work is done and what the process includes. This column provides a discussion of some newer concepts that some advisors may want to consider to help improve client acquisition and retention skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Financial planners may want to consider encouraging their clients to have an emergency plan in place and to develop and maintain those things that help build resilience for times of crisis and unusual stress such as hurricanes. Support groups can contribute to resilience and can provide not only assistance in times of crisis but also opportunities to assist others, which can be just as meaningful and important to a person's resilience. By encouraging clients to connect with others--whether that connection comes through churches, schools, associations, or even neighborhood gatherings--financial service professionals are helping their clients to be ready for whatever happens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A well-versed financial professional can provide an incredible service to clients seeking clear guidance on how to properly handle nonqualifed retirement benefits. Although mastery of the details may fall to the plan participant's administrator, attorney, or accountant, a competent working knowledge of the issues, concerns, and potential roadblocks will invariably assist clients in navigating through the seemingly irreconcilable differences presented by domestic orders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Age discrimination and ageism are real issues for many people who are transitioning to retirement or are already deep into that life stage. Advisors who have a better understanding of how society views older people and how that may affect client attitudes about their own aging will be more empathetic and able to build lasting relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of the fiduciary rule is noble. It intends to make sure that the agent or advisor looks out for the "best interests" of the advisee or client. However, the fact that we need to promote such a rule in such a complex way points to two serious societal issues that have been largely overlooked: the lack of an ethos that views financial advisors as professionals and the muddied notion of best interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Financial planners looking to provide wraparound services for their clients may want to consider several unique ideas to augment their financial planning practice. These include: appointing a daily money manager to service their client's basic financial needs, connecting with a reverse mortgage counselor, engaging a social worker or life coach to help counsel a client about the transition to retirement, compiling a package of brochures about local retirement living options for distribution to clients, and dispensing the "Financial Self-Defense Guide for Seniors" and other industry brochures. Retired clients often need these extra services, and the planner can cement his or her relationship by caring enough to go the extra mile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using an integrative approach combining economic theory with psychological constructs, this study examines the impact of trust on the perceived value of a consumer-financial service provider relationship. This study is one of the first to explicitly investigate the value of financial advice by testing the moderating effect of trust on the conditional effect of agency cost, more specifically monitoring cost, on the overall value of the relationship. Findings suggest that trust, as well as risk-sharing and increased consumer satisfaction, reduces agency cost and subsequently increases the value of a consumer-financial service professional relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When assessing a fund manager's skill, sophisticated investors will consider all factors (priced and unpriced) that explain cross-sectional variation in fund performance. We investigate which factors investors attend to by analyzing mutual fund flows as a function of recent returns decomposed into alpha and factor-related returns. Surprisingly, investors attend most to market risk (beta) when evaluating funds and treat returns attributable to size, value, momentum, and industry factors as alpha. Using proxies for investor sophistication (wealth, distribution channels, and periods of high investor sentiment), we find that more sophisticated investors use more sophisticated benchmarks when evaluating fund performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I provide a measure for the value that investors place on trust and relationships in asset management by examining mutual fund flows around announced changes in the ownership of fund management companies. I find a decline in flows of around 7% of fund assets in the year following the announcement date, resulting primarily from fund outflows. Retail investors and investors in funds with higher expense ratios are most responsive to ownership changes, providing evidence that such investors appear to place a significant value on trust and are more likely to respond to a relationship disruption by withdrawing their assets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nearly three decades ago, in 1985, the predecessor of America Online was created. While this founding did not mark the invention of the Internet, it did usher in the mass awareness of it. This was also around the time the individuals we term "young advisors" were born. Thus young advisors and the Internet grew up together. Today, those young advisors and the Internet can either work together or against each other as they face a changing landscape in 2015. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We all need to learn better how to build collaborative relationships with our clients. That effort begins the first time a prospect becomes aware of our services prior to establishing a professional relationship. Because of the availability of information via the Internet, it is important to remember that while collaboration necessarily involves working together, it doesn't necessarily involve working exclusively together. Whether collaboration occurs between two individuals or 20, it is important to acknowledge and accept the contributions that each brings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the authors discuss how taking a holistic approach to the succession planning process provides clients with the most value for their businesses, minimizes their tax burdens, and allows them to control the processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the rise in women's economic power and their increasingly present roles in managing family finances and investments, a successful couples advisor needs to learn how to balance the needs of both members of a couple. This requires a different skill set and knowledge base than working with an individual client, or catering to only one member of the partnership. To effectively counsel couples, an advisor needs a solid understanding of couple dynamics and key gender differences relative to communication, interpersonal preferences, and wealth. The professional needs to be part mediator, part facilitator, and part objective observer--making advising couples more art than science. To date, there is very little written for financial service professionals on how to effectively advise couples. This is surprising given the reality that most of the clients seen by financial advisors and planners are couples. This article discusses how couple dynamics play out in advising meetings and offers five strategies for maximizing the advisor's effectiveness in working with couples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As thousands of baby boomers cross the age 65 and retirement threshold every day, and typically comprise a significant portion of a financial professional's book of business, it's especially important for financial advisors to understand the many demographic and personal dynamics of this huge client base. Despite decades of scrutiny, many myths, stereotypes, and misperceptions remain about baby boomers. The financial professional who understands and appreciates the differing characteristics within this cohort, as well as how individuals can differ in their approaches to the planning process, can create a more satisfying and successful client relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Competent contractors are one of the critical stakeholders to achieve targeted sustainability objectives in green building (GB) projects. Prior to contractor selection, prequalification is an important step, which requires contractors with certain capabilities in addition to traditional features. This study aims to develop a systematic and practical model for prequalification in GB projects using a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) approach by adopting the analytical hierarchy process (AHP). Design/methodology/approach: The AHP model with 8 main criteria groups and 25 sub-criteria is structured based on literature review and professional opinions accompanied by a pilot study. Then, interviews with experts, who are experienced in the development and application phases of GB projects in Turkey, are arranged to collect judgements. The agreement levels between different groups of experts are analysed via Pearson's and Spearman's rank correlation coefficient. Model applicability is tested on six hypothetical contractors for practicality. Findings: The results show that i) financial capabilities, ii) legal status and iii) sustainability groups are the top three main criteria, while i) compliance with schedule requirements of the client, ii) current legal status including suits, iii) negative litigation history records, iv) contractor's compliance capacity to client's sustainability checklist for the proposed project and v) sustainability with lower life cycle cost (durability, maintenance, constructability) are the top five sub-criteria. Originality/value: There is a gap in the literature analysing contractor prequalification phase in GB projects. This study attempts to fill this lack provided with a practical evaluation tool. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Monetary concerns in structural schemes cause serious ramifications that may impede the expansion of schemes and impact the entire fiscal conditions of any country. The study highlights the issues of finance procrastinates in construction schemes. Aim to find the prominent issues on finance-related hurdles, which lead to production obstructions and to explore do able resolutions to overcome monetary connected production delays. The date was accumulated via a survey-based questionnaire and followed by the survey-based interviews. The responses were concluded from the amalgamation of clients, advisors, bankers, and brokers in the questionnaire. Brokers' unsteady monetary conditions. Customers' weak monetary and trade administration hinders in getting financial support from financers besides inflation were found as the most prominent problems. The outcomes highlight customers have the most significant function in reducing the influence of monetary issues regarding scheme procrastination. Suggestions and recommendations to reduce monetary-related procrastinations are presented accordingly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to probe whether the quest for sustainability in financial social enterprise institutions leads to mission drift. Both formal and informal institutions play an important role as interventions to promote inclusion. They struggle between an explicit social mission and the implicit quest for sustainability. The debate remains on whether such organisations can achieve financial sustainability without compromising outreach. Design/methodology/approach: The study uses interviews and focus group discussions in nine different hybrid organisations involved in providing different types of financial services in Swaziland. Findings: The results suggest that smaller and informal enterprises tend to have less mission drift. Their risk mitigation and management approaches such as group liability and use of traditional governance structures are more adapted to the characteristics of the groups served. The modus operandi of larger enterprises tends to mimic mainstream lenders with risk mitigation measures that are inherently unsustainable for this type of market. Research limitations/implications: Sustainability in financial enterprises requires new contextualised models of risk management and client selection more appropriate for excluded groups. Moreover, using group lending as a measure of outreach maybe flawed. Other forms of social capital can be used to increase outreach even in the absence of group lending. The perceived trade-off between commercial gain and outreach is somewhat complex. Mission drift seems to depend on the capital structure. Originality/value: The paper contributes to an infant but important debate on how sustainability can be achieved without compromising outreach in financial institutions designed to increase financial inclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Systematic literature review on green energy investments barriers. • Evaluation interviews with financial investors, advisers or experts. • Green investment barriers are found to be interrelated and to form a complex system. • A systems perspective as theoretical framework for successful long-term policy intervention is recommended. • A systems approach supports the exploitation of synergies, whilst avoiding adverse side effects. Meeting its climate policy objectives requires the UK to rapidly decarbonise its energy sector. This demands high levels of investments into low carbon energy infrastructure, which are currently not undertaken at required scale, leading to a green finance gap. We explore (1) key investment barriers, (2) a theoretical framework for investigation and (3) possible solutions, drawing on a review of academic literature and policy reports, and interviews conducted with financial investors and experts. Our study confirms that policy uncertainty and short-termism in the financial system are the two main investment barriers. Our results show that identified barriers form a complex system characterised by path-dependency, lock-in and non-linearity. We recommend the adoption of systems theory as an analytical framework to inform the related policy debate and propose the expansion or development of sustainable investment vehicles as a useful near-term solution while preparing a long-term policy intervention based on a systems perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because decision making is complicated, political elites seek advice when making decisions, and the ways in which they use that advice has systematic features. But, analyses of decision making among elites usually fail to account for advice. We take advantage of unique information about the advice provided to one set of elites to empirically uncover the effect of advice. Specifically, we examine law clerk recommendations on cert to Justice Blackmun. We find that, even after controlling for known determinants of cert and considering sequential decision making, the advice of a trusted advisor matters greatly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes why it is important for financial service advisors to understand how client stress impacts the client-financial advisor relationship. A key finding is that few clients are able to accurately evaluate their level of financial stress. It was determined that less than one out of five prospective clients are able to identify their stress level accurately. This means that only about 20% of prospective clients are cognitively receptive to receiving and implementing financial recommendations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]