Reserve plan sponsors for your marketing with Plan of the Week
RiXtrema’s Plan of the Week email allows you to reserve plan sponsors for 6 months and keep those sponsors from being distributed to other users. It is one more way we try to keep marketing options open for all our users. Just click on the blue button to reserve the plan. (Figure 1). The Plan...Read More
Case Study: Here’s why your Risk Tolerance Questionnaire is failing you
Risk Tolerance is just half the picture Now is the time to reflect A questionnaire without Risk Capacity is a blunt tool! Risk Capacity + Risk Tolerance = Risk Profile How did your client investors react during the worst of the 2008 Financial Crisis? Did you stick to your investment plan or did you bend to the...Read More
Great Recession Deja Vu?: What to say to ignore the peanut gallery
What do you tell fearful clients when they call to suddenly change their investment strategy because of the trending bearish media soundbite? Maybe it is easy to dismiss when the source is dim. But, periodically a few distinguished voices emerge distinct from the usual chatter of bull, bear, push and pull monkeys shaking their crystal balls for peanuts and spectacle....Read More
Capture Your Client’s Risk Profile with the PCT Questionnaire
Sending a Risk Questionnaire First, Risk Tolerance Expanding the Picture with Risk Capacity So the Investor Completed the Questionnaire, Now What? Key Takeaways At Larkspur-Rixtrema, we know how important it is for financial advisors to understand their client’s risk preferences, so they can utilize appropriate investment products for their client’s portfolios. Simply measuring risk...Read More
Podcast: A Blockchain is Not a Blockchain: Decentralized and Permissioned Blockchains
When it comes to social impact of cryptocurrencies and blockchain, there are two schools of thought. One says that a blockchain is a great tool of decentralization and disruption in both tech and finance, and that decentralization specifically means more freedom. For example, Bitcoin users are very big on the fact that supply of Bitcoin...Read More
Are You Capitalizing On Growing ESG-investing Popularity
What is ESG? Trendy, but Who Cares? Advisors are Missing the ESG Market. How Do Advisors Attract ESG Clients? We all can become complacent in our work at times. As daily tasks pile up, we spend our working days simply addressing the next appointment or putting out small fires as they appear. Yet, this...Read More
Case Study: How to take Prospecting to a New Level with Larkspur Executive’s Custom Trackable Marketing Letters (CTML)
Here at Larkspur-RiXtrema, we understand retirement plan advisors. Over 10K plan advisors use our software, which is about a quarter of all plan advisors in the country. We understand how busy you are and the challenges with getting a response from plan sponsors in growing your practice. When it comes to plan improvement, the plan...Read More
Case Study: Understanding Risk Capacity
Oftentimes, an investor may be especially averse to risk on an emotional level, but their need to take more risk in order to reach investment goals may be lost on them. Advisors need a way to reconcile this concept to their clients. How do you make a client understand this relationship between risk and return in a constructive way?
Inverted Yield Curves Revisited
I wrote about yield curve inversions back in November 2018. At the time the US yield curve was flattening, but resisting inversion. By the most common measure of inversion, the yield on the 10-year Treasury minus the yield on the 2-year Treasury (10-2). The graph below shows the 10-2 spread prior to the last recession...Read More
How Target Date Defaults Affect Equity Allocation Exposure
Money market funds used to be common default investments for 401k plans. More recently, it is becoming more common for target date funds to be the default investment of choice. While it might make more sense to use a TDF as a default, How Target Date Defaults Affect Equity Allocation Exposure takes an interesting look at the unintended consequences.