AMA with Alan Moore and Michael Kitces, Part One

Have you ever wondered why the CFP® certification is the "gold standard", or who owns equity in XYPN, or if Michael Kitces owns any shirts that aren't blue? 

If so, you aren't alone.

As XYPN continues to grow, more and more questions arise, such as what the future of our organization looks like or what new benefits and services are on the horizon.

In an effort to be as transparent as possible (we pride ourselves on being an open book), we regularly open the floor to questions. At XYPN LIVE 2018, Michael and I took the stage for a one-hour AMA—but an hour wasn't nearly enough time to get through all the questions submitted and asked live by conference attendees.

Because we strongly feel no question should go unanswered, we've taken the AMA from the stage to the page and answered your burning questions—all 52 of them—in this two-part blog series. 

So, without further ado, let's finish what we started at the conference and get your questions answered!

I'd love an update on the Find an Advisor portal. Specifically, will the search tool be made more user-friendly?

Yes, we are currently in the process of updating our Find an Advisor (FAA) search portal. Our updated portal will allow for zip code-based search as well as multi-level filtering, so you will be able to select location and niche (our current portal is limited to one search filter at a time). We expect the updated FAA portal to be rolled out in the next few weeks, no later than the end of 2018.

What is the future of MangoApps? What is the future role of Joe Matelich?

As we announced at XYPN LIVE, we are in exploration mode of finding a new system. We’re currently in the final stages of selecting the new forum system we’ll be moving to and our plan is to start the rollout and buildout of the new forum system in Q1. Our goal is to have everyone moved over to the new forum starting in April 2019.

Joe has been an extremely valuable member of the community in helping to answer questions and sort and filter new information. We’re hoping that the new forum systems eliminates the need for him to do quite so much organization—we are very thankful for the work he’s done but hope we can ease the burden of some of the needs there.

In the future, we also plan to add a “Community Manager” staff member to our XYPN team to help manage, organize, and run the forums, and ultimately make them easier to use. 

Your Compliance Team only answers questions during office hours. For the sake of efficiency and support, can you set up a system where we email or post online a question and get an answer within two business days? 

In terms of compliance, we are continuing to refine this service model and we want to balance efficiency with expediency. We certainly want to make sure you can get your questions answered.

Office hours have proved to be an extremely successful way of not only getting your questions answered live by one of the members of our Compliance Team, but also being able to hear the questions other people have and learn from them.

We are largely trying to live in the forums in terms of compliance questions currently. We are open to exploring ways of providing more email support. There’s always the potential for higher service tiers—for example, a more hand-holding, white-glove compliance service. 

Are you searching for a Digital Estate Planning company that can be the company XYPN members can partner with in the same way we use LLIS?

This is something that we’re definitely open to. There are not a lot of groups in terms of estate attorneys that operate the same way XYPN does with the legal requirement that you be registered in every state. Finding a single law firm or group with attorneys in all 50 states can be a bit of a challenge. Estate planning seems to be a service that advisors and clients do in person. They tend to not do it virtually. But if you have ideas or groups that you’d like for us to explore a partnership with, we welcome an introduction.

Have you thought about having two tiers on your Find an Advisor portal? I am a career changer, so I need 6,000 hours before becoming a CFP®. I don’t include my XYPN membership on my website or send my articles to XYPN because if a prospect goes to the XYPN site, they can’t find me.

We made the decision when we first launched XYPN that we were going to be committed to the CFP® designation being the central designation for financial advisors. This was a tough decision because we have a lot of advisors who are not CFPs® but are working towards it, and we understand the frustration with not being listed on the FAA portal.

We wanted to be able to set minimum standards. There are a lot of ways we could have done this, but we felt like using the CFP® as a minimum standard of education and experience was a fair line to draw.

Quite honestly, we followed the footsteps of NAPFA and FPA in requiring the CFP® to be listed on the FAA portal. We don’t expect to make any changes to this requirement at this time, and instead have been focusing on helping our non-CFP members to get their CFP® marks with programs like our partnership with FPA Residency to expedite satisfying the experience requirement.

Through FPA Residency Powered by XYPN, you get a wonderful education, and three months of work experience to count towards your CFP®. You also get the opportunity to make connections with other advisors to get additional work experience.    

Is XYIS the only TAMP recommended by XYPN, or are there plans to review other TAMPs in the future? Betterment used to be another option, but they are now offering financial planning services.

We started XY Investment Solutions (XYIS) because we recognized that the vast majority of TAMPs were built for advisors who had a very high level of assets, or a lot of accounts and clients who had $1 million or more in assets.

TAMPs were really designed for wealthy clients and wealthy advisors. We built XYIS from the ground up for our target market—for XYPN members—who are advisors working with clients who don’t necessarily have $1 million in investable assets. There is a plethora of other TAMPs, and each has their own niche of target advisors they are best suited to serve.

We typically aren't big fans of any platform that can’t claim a niche. XYIS is built to be the best in serving the advisors in XYPN. There are plenty of other options discussed inside the forums that you can find—including reviews, information, and pricing of other TAMPs—but the reason we started XYIS was because we couldn’t find other TAMP solutions that were prepared to serve our members in the long run the way we thought they should be served.

What is XYPN doing to aggregate advisor requests for tech vendor road map prioritization? Most tech ideas go off to the void to die.

We’re trying to be more proactive about gathering feedback from our advisors and creating mechanisms to get that feedback to our vendors—including requesting a roadmap in terms of when certain features will be implemented and being able to hold them accountable to hit the deadlines. 

We now have experience building tech over at AdvicePay and we know now it is actually possible to hit deadlines you set—if you agree to a date, you should be able to deliver whatever it is you're promising by that date. That’s the expectation we have for our vendors.

At this time, our Member Experience Team is pulling together this information about tech requests from members, and our Advisor Success Team is working with our vendors to ensure our members needs are met through those relationships.

How is XYPN being proactive about the mental health of members, especially new launchers who will go through some doubt as they grow?

The truth is, starting a business is hard and it can take a heavy toll on you. The ups and downs of the roller coaster ride that is business ownership are exhausting. Below are a few of the things we do and encourage to ease the sometimes heavy burden of starting a business:

1) We work with our new firms to make sure they have the financial footing and backing to be able to start a business. It is a lot more stressful to start a business with no money than if you have 2-3 years of expenses in the bank. It’s one thing our Sales Team pushes back on with prospective members. They’ll ask, “Do you have enough savings or income from a partner or another source that’s able to support your lifestyle?”

2) We try to put all of our new members in study groups to ensure they’re surrounded by their peers and they have a support system they can go to with questions, concerns, and struggles.

3) We talk about it. We‘ve had a couple of #XYPNRadio guests mention the importance of mental health and what they do to be proactive about their mental health, and it’s something we openly discuss and will continue to openly discuss.

Taking care of yourself mentally and physically and investing time into your relationship are all so important to growing a business. Nothing makes me angrier than this quote from Randi Zuckerberg: “Work, sleep, family, fitness, or friends: pick three.” It’s just not true! You can have it all. But you need to have balance, or you’ll burn out. 

From a cybersecurity and CCO standpoint, can XYPN help its members by providing some level of software vendor due diligence?

When we work with new vendors, we have conversations to gain an understanding of their cybersecurity best practices. But honestly this is something we could do a better job at. We could facilitate packaging the due diligence documents from the various vendors we work with, and making them available to members to have with their own compliance due diligence documentation for their firms. We’ll take this request back and see if it’s something we can start pulling together, so all of our members don’t have to (re-)create it themselves.

The XYPN universe offers a growing range of awesome stuff, but I’m a little hesitant to sign up for some of these services because doing so will make it much harder to leave the network if I someday decide to. It would upend my whole business if I lost bookkeeping, custodian, tech tools, TAMP, etc. Is this something I should be concerned about?

One of the guarantees we offer our members is that they can leave at any time. We don’t hold hostages. It’s one of the things many of our advisors know differentiates us from the independent broker-dealer world, where you can’t take your clients, you can’t take your tech—everything is held hostage. 

If you choose to leave XYPN, we of course will hate to see you go, but ultimately, you’ll be able to walk away with your data and the services. Bookkeeping services through FABC are available direct for non-members (albeit with slightly different pricing that’s discounted for members) so you won’t be handcuffed or have to change service providers if you leave. All of the technology in our tech stack is available direct for non-members (you’ll simply switch over and pay retail pricing). If you’re using WealthBox for a CRM or Right Capital for financial planning software, all of that data is yours—these are your systems and you can take them whenever you want. We don’t hold any of that data proprietary; we don’t own any of that data; we don’t stop you from taking it.

We want to be involved in your business and we’ll continue to offer new and interesting services that we think will better serve our members in ways they’re not currently being served. But ultimately, at our core, with every service, technology, and benefit we provide, our goal is to be able to offer you a way to leave without losing any information or losing assistance—though it may cost you more money because you will have to pay those licenses/costs directly and without the discounting and bargaining power of XYPN. 

Are there any plans to introduce a membership category for members who don't need the tech tools and just want/need access to the community?

There is not currently a plan at this time. Our value is meant to be a holistic package, recognizing that advisors will pick and choose exactly which components are relevant for them. We have a lot of advisors who may not use our tech but use a lot of other services, whether it be our coaching, our community, the forums, our group E&O insurance policy, NAPFA membership…

We really try to offer wide range of services. We know it’s easy to look at membership and say, “I’m not using these three things, so I don’t want to pay the full membership fee.” We always encourage XYPN members to sit down with their Member Experience Specialist (MES) and have a conversation about what they are using and leveraging. And for the vast majority of members, there’s enough included that even if they don’t use all the technology tools, they’re getting a solid ROI in terms of hard dollar costs, not even including intangibles, such as one of the biggest benefits we offer—access to our robust community of financial advisors.

Given survey revenue for years 1 & 2 have you considered different pricing for XYPN membership based on the year they are in?

One of the commitments and decisions we made early on was to lower the barrier to entry of starting a firm. Several other platforms will charge extremely high fees in the first year in order to help you get your firm started. We made the decision that we were going to price everyone the same for the core membership but offer additional services for additional costs as needed (such as bookkeeping through XYPN Books, investment solutions through XYIS, which firms can choose to buy and add on when they are ready to do so).

While many advisors themselves charge more for the additional upfront work involved in taking on a new client (a similar challenge we face as XYPN with a new member), we’ve deliberately tried to avoid this (and not create even more of an upfront barrier), as our business model is stable and healthy, and doesn’t require us to charge two or three times more the first year than subsequent years. So we’d much rather make it easier for a business getting off the ground—cutting a check for that big upfront fee isn’t necessary at XYPN.

There were several people at the conference who are fee-only planners working at broker/dealers. These people want to join XYPN. Will this ever be possible?

You know this is a really interesting scenario. The CFP Board is in the process of updating their definitions of fee-only and the updated definitions will provide at least a little more flexibility for advisors who have ties to commission-based entities that have no connection with the actual services they provide to clients. However, though, if you are employed by a broker-dealer or working for a firm that has a broker-dealer relationship, claiming fee-only is still not going to be extremely challenging. 

The only way to do that will be to contractually agree that none of your financial planning clients will ever purchase any products—insurance or investment-related—from your firm. Not just from you, but from anyone in your firm. As the definition of fee-only is effectively at the firm-level definition, not at the individual advisor level. So you can’t claim you’re fee-only if someone else in your firm is selling the insurance because your company is benefiting from sales-related compensation in connection with services being provided to clients.

So in the short-term, in order to join XYPN, those advisors will need to separate from the broker-dealer, and go the independent RIA route. We understand that is a frustration for some people. But it is extremely difficult for us to be able to tell the difference between the person who is doing great planning and just so happens to have some insurance trails (or who even does one insurance policy a year) and the person who is using financial planning as a way of selling whole life insurance to people who don’t need it. We’ve therefore chosen to follow the CFP Board’s of fee-only so we don’t create confusion. For that reason, at this time, anyone with a broker-dealer relationship would not be eligible for XYPN membership.

What's your opinion on just relying on the CFA or CPA as a financial planner? Why is the CFP® the gold standard?

It really boils down to the education you’re getting. The CPA provides a wonderful education on tax planning, some auditing, and on taxes overall. With this education, you’ll be an expert on taxation.

The CFA is a wonderful tool and education platform to learn about economics, how markets operate, and how to analyze the books of individual companies. 

Neither education program is designed to teach you how to do comprehensive financial planning. Ultimately, the CFP® is the best educational program to teach comprehensive financial planning. You really need that initial education that teaches you the comprehensive nature of the work you’re doing. Just as we wouldn’t encourage any members to do tax auditing work without a CPA license, or investment analysis of individual stocks without a CFA 

Financial planning seems to be the only profession that has multiple designations that are fighting for the same world. A doctor has the MD degree, attorneys have the JD license. We want financial planners to be known for having the CFP® designation. And they can always add additional expertise on top, for which the CPA license and CFA are great examples of deeper specializations in their respective domains.

How does XYPN continue to verify that advisors maintain their fee-only status? What are your thoughts on signing the oath each year to certify compliance within the organization?

We do audit our members from time to time. This typically occurs when they’re leveraging our compliance services (about 70-80% use our ADV update service that is included in membership). If they’re going through the ADV update process, and an advisor is trying to add non-fee-only activities, such as insurance licenses, it pops up on our radar.

Members have also helped us to self-police the community. Every now and then we'll get an email from a member saying, “So and so made a comment in the forums, so I checked them out and they’ve added insurance licensing to their services.” That’s a conversation we’ll then have with the member.

I will say because we know our members are fee-only when they join, we hold them out on our FAA portal as fee-only. If an advisor holds out as fee-only on our website while not actually being fee-only, it will potentially cost them their CFP® certification, and risks a regulatory action from their state regulators as well if they’re advertising in a misleading way. That’s a high risk without a lot of return, so we would hope that the adverse consequences themselves from a regulatory and legal perspective—since we do require members to post their Fiduciary Oath and attest to being fee-only —would be a further deterrent.

I am not an XYPN member. I am at a Schwab independent RIA, with insurance trails though my practice is fee only. I can’t leave right now because of my firm’s preferred Schwab status and our niche has one employer who custodies at Schwab. Is there a way I could join XYPN now or is there a way on the horizon?

Even under the CFP Board’s updated (and somewhat more liberal) definition for fee-only, we advocated in our own Public Comment letter that we believe fee-only status should be allowed if you aren’t continuing to sell new insurance products (and just receive trails to service existing clients), but the CFP Board declined to make this change.

There is a great relationship with NAPFA. How’s the relationship with FPA?

We have a great professional relationship with FPA. We’ve had several conversations about potentially partnering more deeply at various times. We just haven’t quite found the synergies that make it attractive for our membership. Though we do run the FPA Residency Powered by XYPN program in partnership with them.

The partnership with NAPFA makes a lot of sense because our advisors are fee-only, we have the same fiduciary oath status that NAPFA does, we have the same core beliefs around what financial planning is, and quite honestly NAPFA simply has a much bigger footprint in terms of lead generation. That was attractive to be able to have our advisors tap into NAPFA's lead generation service and be able to get clients through their Find An Advisor portal.

FPA does not have that type of footprint for lead generation. It’s a less niche organization, that more broadly serves all advisors. And thus they just haven’t had the traction from a media standpoint to drive the same engagement to their PlannerSearch portal.

So we just haven’t found a relationship that makes sense quite yet, but it’s something we continue to explore, and the lines of communication are open with the FPA leadership.

How much of NAPFA's 600 new members (as mentioned in the half-yearly update) were attributable to XYPN? If a significant amount, as presumed, can we expect XYPN to carry a larger voice and direction votes going forward?

We remain extremely involved at the strategic level and at the leadership level with NAPFA. We have contributed to a sustainable portion of their growth over the last several years, which is something they have noted as well. A lot of their new members are coming from XYPN, so we do stay involved for things that affect our members and the industry as a whole.

Ultimately NAPFA is a 501(c)6 non-profit membership association—they’re an advocacy association that’s able to advocate with regulators and legislators, so it is a conversation and line of communication we keep open, and we’ll continue to stay involved there.

Who owns equity in XYPN? Can we buy some?

XYPN is wholly owned by us—Alan Moore and Michael Kitces. We’ve never taken outside investor dollars, as a deliberate decision so that we can stay focused on what we believe that XYPN can accomplish without needing to acquiesce to the often shorter-term profit/growth demands of outside investors.

Our COO, Raul Dominguez, was granted some profit-interest shares of our LLC when he came on board in recognition of his unique executive-level position in the company. But at this point, it’s really just us, and we don’t currently plan on opening it up for others (including members) to become investors. 

What are XYPN's goals for 2019?

We’re really excited for 2019. The prior 2018 year was really an infrastructure-building year for us, which is necessary, but a bit boring. We did what we had to do internal to our company to be sure we were positioned for growth. (We were still using a CRM and payment processor that was adopted when we thought we were only going to have 50 members!) 

For 2019, our goals are to continue to grow and spread the message of fee-only planning and fiduciary-centric advice and continue to make it known that our advisors serve next-gen clients. We expect to continue to grow at a similar pace that we have.

Each team has departmental-level goals that will be implemented throughout the year. Our Advisor Success Team will be very busy rolling out new programs and initiatives around helping our advisors be more successful financial planners and business owners. 

Our Member Experience Team will be rolling out additional engagement services to be sure we’re connecting the members of our community with one another.

Our Compliance Team will be looking to add some additional services that allow for more hand-holding compliance services, which a lot of our advisors have requested.

XYPN Books will be beta-testing a white-label tax preparation service for members so XYPN advisors will be able to offer tax preparation as part of their service model.

And XYIS continues to refine and build its platform to be able to better serve our advisors.

Company-wide we have a lot of goals; our primary goal is to continue to grow and better serve our advisors.

Do any XYPN staff pay a monthly fee for financial planning?

Really timely question! We just rolled out a team member benefit for our entire team to be able access financial planning on a one-on-one basis with our advisors. We recently issued an RFP for XYPN members to apply to be on a short list of advisors we recommend to our team. XYPN will be offsetting the cost of that relationship. 

We do think it is so important that our team members have a full understanding of what it is our advisors do. We can describe financial planning, but it’s really hard to fully understand it until you experience it. We’re so excited for all of our team to be able to experience real financial planning. 

Is there anything new you’re doing to ensure you have a diverse slate of candidates for XYPN now that new hires are going to Bozeman?

This is definitely top of mind because Montana is not the most diverse state. According to the Census Bureau itself, racially it is a very non-diverse state at almost 93% white. We’ve been doing a couple of things to try to lay the foundation that we need to be successful in terms of recruiting diverse applicants in the future.

Our female-male ratio is impressive. In fact, about 70% of employees within XYPN’s family of companies are female, which is something we are really proud of. 

Now we’re starting to look at how we can be sure that we’re bringing in non-white applicants, candidates, and new hires, to maintain racial diversity as well. We have a couple of strategies were working on:

• We built out policies that say what our goals are. Currently our goals are to have 10% of our team be non-white by the end of 2019, and 20% non-white by the end of 2021. The first step in trying to move the needle is setting a goal.
• We have a requirement that there be at least one non-white candidate in every applicant pool for every position we offer. Typically, we see about 20 applicants per position that are highly qualified; we pass about 10 on to our Directors for the first round of interviews. The mandate is at least one person passed on to our Directors for review will be a person of color. So, 10-20% of the applicants that are getting in front of the director are non-white applicants and come from a diverse background. Sometimes this is a hard thing to measure because you can’t ask for race and ethnicity as part of the application process. It’s challenging and we are still learning the best ways to track and promote this.
• We’re also working with local various groups (Native American Advocacy Association, the African and the African American Associations at Montana State University). We’ll also be at Clark Atlanta, an HBCU, this year for their career fair to recruit for our internship program. Our goal is to start to fill the pipeline with diverse candidates so we can start building out (and maintaining) even more diversity at XYPN. 

What is the #1 growth inhibitor to XYPN as an organization?

The truth is we have been inhibited by the fact that we were self-funded. Advisors have heard this story but ultimately, XYPN was started with a $15,000 check from Michael and sweat equity from me. That’s all we had in the bank when we first got started. And it’s all we needed. There were times when there were things we wanted to do, conferences we wanted to exhibit at, and marketing strategies we wanted to try, that required more capital than we had. 

We’re very proud of and happy with the fact that we have not sought after or needed capital at XYPN. It has allowed us to stay on mission and on brand. It has allowed us to build out the company and service model we want for the advisors we want to serve and to attract the team we want to attract. Ultimately, though, it has been a limiting factor. 

And that’s okay. Not all growth is good growth. Limiting growth to a healthy level that’s maintainable without having to take capital is a huge strategic advantage for us.

We have one of the best brand ambassadors in the business with Michael. Yet Michael does very little in his public or media appearances to promote XYPN. Is Michael conflicted in promoting XYPN being a partner at Pinnacle?

One of the understandings and agreements we made early on was that Michael’s writing and speaking would be as agnostic and objective as possible. That’s just who Michael is. He is able more so than most to draw lines. If he ever mentions XYPN on his blog, he puts a disclaimer at the bottom explaining that he’s a partner at XYPN.

I’ll say that none of the lack of mentioning XYPN has anything to do with his partnership at Pinnacle. It really has to do with his desire to be objective in all of his content and not feel like he’s selling from the stage. He’s being paid to speak and provide education and he’s going to do just that.

Could he sell from the stage more? Of course he could. But I also think that would undercut his credibility and the overall credibility of the XYPN brand and I don’t think that’s necessary. And he actually does mention XYPN in articles on his blog more than Pinnacle on his blog anyway!

How can members help you grow faster and go farther?

One of the biggest sources of new members for XYPN is existing member referrals. If you’re a member, when someone asks you how you started your own firm, we always so appreciate you sending them our way and letting us chat with them. Tell them the truth about your experience—the good, the bad, and everything in between—so they know what they’re getting themselves into when it comes to membership and starting a business.

We don’t need our members knocking down doors to send folks our way, but if there is an opportunity to share our message, we always appreciate you doing so. 

With outside investments in Robust Wealth and other tools, what can XYPN do going forward to help keep key software from being bought out from underneath us? Migrations are not fun...

This is really tough for us as well, because we tend to partner with new-age technology. And it’s great technology but it’s new, and they’re pushing the envelope, so that technology often ultimately sells. I would say that no tech vendor is safe. Even established vendors such as eMoney ultimately end up getting sold to Fidelity, and new players can get bought up (as RobustWealth did by Principal).  

It’s a conversation that we try to remain open with our vendors about, while also recognizing that we always have an exit plan should we need to transition out of system. 

Do you envision an RIA being spun out of XYPN at some point with so many similar fee-only advisors?

This is a conversation we’ve had from day one—we call this the franchise model.

We currently have the decentralized independent advisor membership model, where you own your own business and we’re helping power the firm. But there is also this franchise model concept, and it’s something we're certainly open to. Though we honestly don’t get a lot of members asking us about this. If we knew we had 50 or 100 or 200 advisors as part of the Network, or who are not part of the Network but who would join if we offered an RIA solution, it would probably push us that direction a little faster.

The logistics of managing that many offices, compliance oversight requirements, and the rest, is a bit daunting given our current scale and size, but at some point it’s something that may become more of an option. 

How is XYPN the same or different from Garrett Planning Network? I've been running into them as a competitor with prospects.

Garrett Planning Network is a little older than we are. They got started about 15 years before we did, and they’re really the Network of hourly advisors. From a platform perspective, we don’t really consider Garrett a competitor to XYPN. Ultimately, you’re going to find your tribe in one place or another.

If you’re really passionate about providing hourly, one-time financial plans, then Garrett Network and their tribe of advisors will likely be a better fit for you than XYPN. If you’re really passionate about providing financial planning on a more comprehensive basis—and on an ongoing basis—and focusing on Gen X and Y clients, then XYPN is going to be a better fit. Some XYPN members are also members of Garrett Planning Network, and that’s totally fine.

From a prospect perspective, the prospect is probably talking to a wide range of advisors and is just trying to make a decision about what they need. You can do your due diligence to educate them about the differences in service models. Garrett and the hourly model are a great option for DIYers who want a quick check-in and who want to be validated that what they’re doing is working. The hourly model is a little more transactional, and you typically work for a lot more clients. Make it clear that you’re looking for clients who want a long-term, ongoing relationship so you can be proactive in helping them build and implement a financial plan that will help them build their great life. Help your prospects understand the difference in service models and let them choose what works best for them.

What are you doing to increase transparency of decisions made internally?

The AMAs at XYPN LIVE and at our Quarterly Town Halls—answering these questions—are all our attempts to try to be transparent. We always try to answer questions that come up. Neither Michael nor I are shy about answering questions because we aren’t afraid of the decisions we’re making.

Part of it is balancing which decisions need to be talked through and which ones don’t. But mostly, it’s really making ourselves available to answer questions.

If you are a member, we encourage you to talk to your MES about questions or concerns about decisions that were made. If they don’t have the answer, they will be able to filter it up, and we’ll able to filter the answer back down. Everyone at XYPN should be able to know and understand what we're doing and why we're doing it. We always strive to make decisions that are congruent with our core values. 

Are there plans for XYPN to provide more planning focused content (CPE eligible)? Real insurance planning, portfolio management, etc... 

Yes. This is a program we’re rolling out. We started a monthly CE webinar program this year and we will continue that program next year as well. Monthly CE webinars are provided by our team, or by independent providers who are not necessarily tied to any particular platform. We have some new team members over at FABC who will be providing tax education, and we have team members at XYIS who can provide investment related content. Quite honestly, it wasn’t until fairly recently that we had people on our team who could provide this type of content, so we haven’t been able to provide it internally. But it is something we are building out. In the meantime, all XYPN members also have access to Kitces’ Members Section at Nerd’s Eye View, which provides CE content that is also CPE eligible for accountants.

Be sure to check out part two of this series, AMA with Alan Moore and Michael Kitces, Part Two, where Michael and I address the remaining 22 questions from our XYPN LIVE 2018 AMA!

About the Author

Alan Moore, MS, CFP® is the co-founder of the XY Planning Network, a support network for advisors looking to serve next generation clients. He is also the CEO of AdvicePay, the first and only compliant payment processor for financial advisors. He is passionate about helping financial planners start and grow their own fee-only firms to serve Gen X & Gen Y clients largely ignored by traditional firms. Alan has been recognized by Investment News as a top “40 Under 40″ in financial planning, by Wealth Management as one of a “The 10 to Watch in 2015″, and was the first recipient of the NAPFA Young Professional award in 2015. Alan frequently speaks on topics related to technology, marketing, and business coaching, and has been quoted in publications including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes and The New York Times. He is also the host of XYPN Radio, one of the largest podcasts for independent financial advisors. He currently lives in Bozeman, MT so that he can hit the slopes on powder days.