Women & Planning

I am working on five key action items with clients to address some of the financial uncertainty many are experiencing.

As the COVID-19 pandemic evolved during the first quarter, the municipal bond market experienced one of its most volatile periods in years. Here, the Franklin Municipal Bond Department shares how they plan to navigate the market, which they think is likely to show signs of distress and elevated volatility for some time.

Bear markets beget portfolio losses, unhappy clients and, sadly, lawsuits against advisors. If you relied on any of the popular risk tolerance products to construct that portfolio, here’s how you are likely to fare under the careful scrutiny of an arbitrator.

The health of our planet depends on responsible investing. On Earth Day and every day, it has our full support.

When it comes to equitable distribution among couples – especially high-net worth couples – there are details to know before approaching the negotiation table.

How does caring for a 70-, 80-, or 90-year old parent affect the retirement plans of a 40-, 50-, or 60-something woman (especially a woman navigating a major transition)?

Let’s address some of the biggest financial concerns your clients have as a result of current events, so they can take action and keep control financially.

But as internship programs shift online, some are questioning their quality.

While this may not come as a surprise, many US small businesses that are shuttered right now face a financial disaster. Unfortunately, it is becoming increasingly clear that millions of small businesses may not be able to reopen their doors when the economic lockdown ends.

Here are the top five things you can do to retain more control over the future of your business, while simultaneously supporting your clients.

I am going to tell you how to win over female clients by not losing them at the onset.

Some 6.6 million additional workers filed for jobless claims this week, but it’s always darkest before the dawn. There’s ample reason to keep hope alive that conditions will be improving sooner than expected.

The $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief package that President Donald Trump signed into law on March 27 is just the beginning. The Treasury Department is now seeking some $250 billion more to replenish small business loans, and there’s hope that the president and House Democrats can agree on a “Phase Four” spending deal, one that may target infrastructure.

When it comes to ESG, not all issues matter equally across industries. We believe our newly updated ESG scoring methodology best captures the issues that are truly material to companies.

He contends the lockdowns intended to contain the coronavirus pandemic are worse than the disease itself.

I’ll focus on how to best serve your female clients in these unprecedented times.

What about all the other components of your referral network beyond clients and COIs? Don’t succumb to wearing referral blinders.

Switching to a tax system where all people filed individually would increase the women’s labor-force participation far more than subsidizing childcare, the IMF found.

In times of uncertainty, good leaders lean into crisis and are able to fully engage, motivate, and inspire their team. The serious and stressful challenge of the COVID-19 crisis demands that leaders embrace flexibility, curiosity, and openness to diverse perspectives.

Visibly absent from the media coverage of the coronavirus crisis is a plan to address the emotions that are overwhelming our clients. Indeed, doing so is an implied mandate of our profession.

I’m going to guide you through a process to overcome the four major ways planning for female executives gets derailed.

Numerous surveys show that women often defer to their male partner regarding financial decisions. By doing so, they may be tragically unprepared to deal with their financial affairs in the event of divorce or death of a spouse. But there’s a solution: get women involved in financial planning by sharing your knowledge. Our free checklist details key steps toward helping female clients understand and gain control of their finances.

The coronavirus will accelerate the changes to the wealth management industry predicted by McKinsey & Co.

There are three key areas where the allocation requirements of passive fixed-income vehicles have an impact on the market.

While the country and the stock markets reel from the impact of the Coronavirus, many economists and politicians are calling for the government to fight the pandemic as if we had to fight the Second World War all over again.

More than 350,000 fitness instructors and trainers in the US have turned to streaming to keep their businesses afloat. Here are nine of the best online workouts.

In a world at war with the coronavirus, your worst enemy is the game your mind plays with itself.

Postcard from Vietnam: On a research trip to Vietnam before the coronavirus crisis, our analysts discovered what it takes for manufacturers to outsource successfully.

We are given the rare opportunity to prioritize what is most important to us without guilt. The material world is on pause, at least for a few weeks.

Here’s why the market crashes even without more bad news, like it did in October 1987 and from late 2007 through March 2009. But this time is different because there is a new set of actors on the stage, exacerbating the problem.

Our Q&A webinar featured Julie Parsonnet, a top infectious disease specialist at Stanford University. We have posted the transcript for your reference and you can still listen to the replay.

Today in the real world, we also face a dark, implacable, powerful foe. It is a microscopic virus that we now know is a threat, a very serious one. We in the United States have just seen the beacons. The warning travelled not just a few hundred miles but around the world: from China and Korea, to Italy and Spain, and now here.

The industries almost entirely shut down by the virus are disproportionately staffed by women.

The first big step in financial planning is examining your clients’ passions and pursuits.

Short of losing a child, losing your spouse is the most painful event someone can experience. The sorrow is overwhelming and often times debilitating. It never goes away, but over time most people learn to peacefully co-exist with it.

Consistent with misapprehensions expressed during other recent market crises, there has been a chorus of alarmist speculation about the actions and state of risk-parity strategies during the current crash. We felt it would be helpful to revisit the concept of risk parity and take a snapshot of how a typical global risk parity strategy might have been expected to behave this year.

This year feels so much like late in 1981, late in 1999 and late in 2008 to us. The first reaction by investors was to flush whatever they had left in economically sensitive stocks. Then, as if there hadn’t been enough torture for value investors today, Saudi Arabia decided to chop the knees out from under the oil industry in the U.S.

What happens to environmental, social and governance-oriented investment in a market shock? We’re about to find out.

Falling oil prices can be a double-edged sword in terms of economic impact: welcomed by consumers, but not by producers. Franklin Templeton Emerging Markets Equity’s Bassel Khatoun shares his thoughts on the impact of lower oil prices on emerging market economies and some considerations for investors

Compared to past viral outbreaks, COVID-19 appears to be less fatal, yet it has received far more media coverage. Paradoxically, that may be part of the reason why it’s had a much bigger impact on public health and the economy relative to those other diseases.

Future-oriented planning serves a purpose, but it misses the central question: What do your clients want their lives to look like?

Why do good people make bad choices? There are plenty of examples of bad conduct, both in the security industry and by corporate titans.

We held a conference call yesterday to discuss the market and economic impact of COVID-19. In case you missed it, each of our speakers shared their key takeaways.

In recognition of International Women’s Day on 8 March, Cady Johnson shares her perspective on gender equality in the financial services industry.

Sonal Desai, PH.D., is executive vice president and chief investment officer of Franklin Templeton Fixed Income, as well a portfolio manager for a number of strategies. In this interview, she discusses the unique investment strategy she has developed, as well as the key risks – specifically the coronavirus – facing investors.

In recognition of International Women’s Day on 8 March, Candice Stack and David Forgash discuss the internship program PIMCO hosts in partnership with Girls Who Invest.

For a lot of women executives, budgeting requires a big change in behavior.

Margaret Farquharson is a senior director with the Nationwide Funds Group and leads its exchange traded fund business, where she has oversight for all aspects of the business including product development, product management, marketing, distribution, and operations.

Here are two steps to provide female investors with comprehensive financial planning.

In a profession heavily dominated by men, female financial advisors need women to serve as mentors, role models, confidants and champions.

Jan Blakeley Holman is the director of advisor education for Thornburg Investment Management. As a speaker and author, Jan draws on four decades in the business, first as an advisor, then as a financial services industry executive and now as an advisor to advisors. She has unique expertise in working with women clients and often teaches advisors how to speak with women about managing their wealth.

Advisors should help clients over age 50 reduce debt, not just build savings.

Commodities look oversold right now, meaning there could be some potentially attractive buying opportunities. Brent crude oil, the global benchmark, traded below $50 per barrel on Friday for the first time since July 2017, while copper remained mostly range-bound.

Divorce is devastating – emotionally, mentally and physically. But, most importantly, according to a recent study, a huge percentage of women suffered unanticipated financial consequences that could have been mitigated or eliminated with better planning.

After years of working with high-earning female executives, I’ve found that their cash flow management problems are not a matter of not having enough income or wealth. The problem is not knowing where it’s going.

It’s scrappy and humbling, but their phone is the one thing that people will run back into a burning building to retrieve. Bring cold calling back into your 2020 marketing!

Whether to purchase long-term care (LTC) insurance is one of the most difficult and consequential decisions a retiree will make. Because of the complexity of the products and the uncertainty of needing care, very few have attempted – as I did below – to provide an objective analysis.

For many advisors, asking clients for referrals remains a messy, uncomfortable situation.

Friends of mine who are enduring the crucible of the loss of their spouses tell me that one of the hardest things, along with the grieving process, is the uncertainty surrounding finances.

We’ve all gritted our teeth whenever one of the trade magazines comes out with a list of the “top” wealth management firms, ranked from “top” to “bottom” based on the absolute least meaningful way to measure the quality of an advisory business: their AUM. The goal of such lists should be to identify those firms that are best at serving their clients and are managed in a healthy and sustainable way. Here’s a way to rank firms that achieves that goal.

So far in 2020, the yield on the 10-year Treasury has averaged 0.01 percent when adjusted for inflation. Since the end of January, it’s actually dipped below 0 percent, trading as low as negative 0.14 percent on January 31.

Divorces in a couples’ later years can be financially devastating, especially for women where the husband has earned most of the money and made most of the financial decisions. Let’s look at some of the most valuable ways advisors can help.

Friday’s jobs report, as well as other recent labor market data, has an “on the one hand; on the other hand” flavor to it.

Learn more about the remarkable lives and contributions of three leading African American economists.

A deep dive into the factors that brought inflation down and are keeping it low.

The lead advisor at my firm is a Boomer and has a firm view that everyone should work for their opportunities. But to him this means staying late every single night, coming in on weekends and basically doing lousy jobs that no one else wants to do, like cleaning the conference room after late-night meetings.

Financial hardship often drive people to adopt views that were previously unthinkable. It is a very powerful behavioural pattern and has significant implications for financial markets. In this month’s Absolute Return Letter, we take a closer look at what it really means.

Dorothy Hinchcliff has joined Advisor Perspectives as its editor. Previously, Hinchcliff was the executive editor of Financial Advisor magazine, as well as editor of FA online and FA green, where she had worked since 2000.

Two topics seemed to dominate at this year’s Inside ETFs conference: the rise of ESG investing, and the emergence of so-called “nontransparent” ETFs. Both promise some big changes to financial markets.

As we head into 2020, municipal bonds will likely remain attractive for many tax-sensitive investors, but their performance potential could prove to be relatively muted compared to 2019, according to Sheila Amoroso, director of our Municipal Bond Department.

In the decades that I have been listening to politicians clumsily trying to explain the economy there has never been a period, with the possible exception of the early Reagan years, in which major party leaders were able to present a solid grasp of economic principles.

The stories of Sheetz and Wawa and how they shifted the focus of their brands offer a fantastic marketing lesson to every financial advisor.

We recently hired a female advisor because our founder is focused on “diversity.” But she had a questionable track record at another firm, left there on bad terms and has rubbed people the wrong way. What do you think about this trend toward diversity for the sake of diversity?

Only 2% of mutual fund assets are managed by women. One of them is Rupal Bhansali, who also happens to be a woman of color. She offers some insights into the keys to her successful career path, as well as the top contrarian opportunities she sees in the non-U.S. markets.

A strong economy will help U.S. consumers meet their financial resolutions in the new year, while residents of France and Australia have bigger worries.