Action! Magazine Articles | AdvisorEngine

Michael Lecours: How financial advisors can navigate the regulatory maze

Written by Suleman Din | Nov 22, 2023 9:16:52 PM

A formidable challenge looms large for financial advisory professionals across the industry – keeping pace with the intricate web of rules and regulations.

As the regulatory landscape continues to evolve, financial advisors find themselves grappling with the complexities of compliance.

Michael Lecours, Co-Founder of fpPathfinder shares some strategies and insights essential for overcoming this challenge, empowering advisors to not only stay compliant but also thrive in a regulated environment. Click the video below to watch the full interview. 

 

Transcript:

By far, the biggest challenge we see advisors struggling with is keeping track of all of the different rules and regulations that exist. There are so many rules out there; the numbers keep changing each year, and right when advisors think they have it all figured out, the rules change. And we look at what's happening with SECURE Act 2.0; all of a sudden, everything's completely different, and now they have to start over. 

One of the big solutions that we see advisors coming up with is systematized processes. That means it's a system to stay on top of the rules. It's a system to make sure that they're addressing it with their clients. And then just making sure that everything is coming together for one client's plan. 

What we do to help our clients and our members is create checklists and flowcharts to make sure that the clients and the advisors can see all of the different planning opportunities that exist. So we have checklists for lots of different life events or checklists to be used with a client throughout the year so that an advisor makes sure that they're never missing a planning opportunity. 

When things like SECURE Act 2.0 come out, the checklists all get updated, so they'll never miss something. One thing right now is to take stock of all the different items out there that clients are looking for and that the clients need, to document your process, document what's going on, and then start to look for the gaps in your process. A lot of those tools can be found here, and if not, advisors can come in to create their own processes to support the tools that they see here.