The Practice Desk 23 stories this week · 217 total

MIT AgeLab's Joseph Coughlin wants advisors to treat monthly health spending as a managed position, not a personal line item, and his October paper gives them a script.

Fiduciary duty requires following lawful client instructions; the advisor's craft is in the pause, the paper trail, and the reassessment that follows.

The Agentic Advisor suite turns meeting output into prioritized action, but small-firm adoption remains the open question.

Twenty $5,000 grants aim at women switching into planning, a profession whose student-focused funding has missed them.

A Senate push would put deliberate friction in front of every outbound ACATS transfer.

Manual order entry covers execution; the durable fix belongs in advisors' client-communication plans.

Osiris St. Brown made his NFL brothers his first clients, then aimed his practice at college athletes who get paid before they understand money.

A downloadable FINRA enforcement file appeared in August, then vanished after reporter questions, leaving broker-dealer and recruit vetting dependent on the regulator's search box.

Fidelity's annual study finds 41% of sponsors now want advisers to take full control of plan investment menus, up from 36% in 2025 — a figure retirement-plan practices can take into the next sponsor conversation.

A BCG finding that just 6% of companies have seen AI reduce costs or grow revenue puts practice owners on the hook to prove the tool adds clients.

The proposed rollback of the 2010 political-contribution rule leaves the blanket bans firms adopted to avoid it standing until chief compliance officers choose to reopen them.

The six-plus-six credit split is simple; the state-registration trigger and permanent carryover demand a per-rep ledger.

A Kitces.com analysis traces the deal to revenue sharing, the fee that turns fund menus and renewal terms into an advisor's first negotiating table.

Ask an Advisor's latest column shows advisors handling unwanted client advances alone; 71% of workplace-harassment survey respondents cite retaliation fears.

The $15 million estate-plan trap and Longview's 1% annual drag turn review season into a growth event.

Integration has moved into pre-deal diligence, but the larger return sits one layer up in orchestration.

Fidelity's Q2 data makes the average participant's deferral the number to put in front of clients saving less.

The doubled investment comes as portfolio rivals upgrade around the platform, making the rollout's reliability the metric that matters.

A recruiting consultant's case studies suggest advisors should audit back-office service as aggressively as they negotiate transition packages.

Advisors who treat Fidelity's record as an agenda—Roth conversions, concentration reviews, income projections—turn a market statistic into a service event.

Ezra Group's directory scores 69 tools on an autonomy scale, turning a noisy market into a purchase checklist.

Pay-as-you-grow software pricing sounds aligned until a vendor's definition of a win differs from the advisor's.

The SEC's proposal to rescind Rule 206(4)-5 would end a two-year penalty clock for advisers with government clients and hand the compliance question to the states.

A single 50,000-token planning task explains why advisory firms should watch the meter more than the unit price.

The SEC's proposal would end the two-year ban on government client work after political contributions, but the rule stays in force until a final vote and the 60-day comment clock hasn't started.

A 44.8% jump in pooled employer plan adoption means the option now belongs in every annual plan review.

Plan advisors can use the correlation to turn managed-account enrollment into a deferral-rate conversation.

At $3,600 per advisor per year and a four-minute plan, Hazel Financial Planning Agent takes direct aim at the three platforms that control more than 80% of RIA planning.

The near-miss at Calamigos Ranch shows why clients with unpredictable careers need plans for surprises no one schedules.

A Financial Planning column argues that advisor-ese is inherited from compliance habits, and that the personal voice is both the safer and the faster way to win clients.

Jump's analysis of nearly 12,000 client meetings gives practices a number to beat, and an opening question to get there.

The Hazel tool compresses a day's planning work into minutes and hands advisors a reason to slow down their next renewal.

Advisors on Altruist's platform should treat the new AI planning agent and the next contract as one negotiation.

Vanguard's $4.6 billion Altruist deal buys access to 6,500 RIAs, but the custody war hinges on whether advisors trust the fund giant not to compete for their clients.

Eligible gig and self-employed clients get a 50% federal match on the first $2,000 they save, and the portal now gives advisors a concrete way to start the conversation.

The Arkansas RIA's Advanced Planning Group puts tax work at the center of estate and advanced planning for advisors on both platforms.