Knowledge and Insight > Thought Leadership

Latest Threat to Financial Advisors

Bob Veres | Financial Planning, August 2014

Summary: You may have heard recently that the financial planning profession is under attack. Advisors are in grave danger of being rendered irrelevant, the Cassandras warn, by the online investment advisory platforms: the so-called robo advisors. What you don’t hear is that this is nothing new. In fact, the short history of the financial planning profession can be viewed as a series of evolutionary responses to different mortal challenges — all of which, in one way or another, have sharply questioned the relevance and value of financial planners.

Advisors have had to improve their model over and over again so that they could deliver better, more-valuable service and advice than the new competitors. In this rapid evolutionary process — perhaps the most rapid of any profession in all of history — advisors and consumers have both been big winners.”