Post COVID

We have all been sheltering in place for the last few weeks and we have a lot of questions for Dr. Fauci and our political leaders.  While we don’t have any medical answers we have been thinking about what our industry will look like after the quarantine. Our blog this week will share our ideas and also give us someone to talk to without risking your health. The three areas we have been thinking about are: 1. What can we keep? 2. What we should change ? 3. What can we improve?  Put on your mask and scrabble players choose a word that starts with a “V”. Thanks for listening.

Keep

We have kept many things over our history because they work. We have improved the items using new technology but at the end of the day we retain most of the idea infrastructure. In our business we need to retain Financial Planning. Our clients need help creating a plan and most importantly sticking to the plan. We have failed teaching this important concept to our children which might explain why we are not equipped to create plans for ourselves as adults. Our teachers and administrators can help here.

Since many of us experienced financial hardships during the COVID crisis we should implement safeguards like having a rainy day fund. Pre COVID that fund needed to be 6 months. Now one year seems preferable.

Improve

Succession planning is on the agenda of all consultants. We have failed because we don’t offer our professionals and younger clients solutions that are current. The most obvious benefit from the pandemic is virtual conferences. The young prefer staying at home in front of a screen or phone instead of being forced to come to our wood paneled offices or religious sanctuaries. We all should embrace that reality.  It will benefit the current service providers by reducing our occupancy costs and it will benefit the next generation who won’t need to Uber to our office and get dressed in clothing that is only in their closet for funerals. 

Change

A crisis is a good time to step back and consider items in our business and ourselves that we need to change. The areas that we hope will change are the algos that are based on history that we now know was erroneous. The areas to start are our asset allocation and our office infrastructure. Both need to improve so we don’t have another conversation that implies certainty when we now know random events and bats are important too. We also need to evaluate where we receive our investment news. Be wary of receiving news from conflicted sources like asset management platforms and old school publications. We have already broken away from Wall Street’s conflicts and adopted a Fiduciary business. 

When this crisis ends we need to promise not to return to our old business as usual. If we do I will be forced to call Dr. Fauci to test you.