“Best Practices For Managing Clients With Diminished Capacity”

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Summary of course:

Our population is living longer than ever. The risk of dementia rises with age. That means that most of us are going to encounter problems of aging in our clients.

We need to recognize the red flags of impairment that will affect financial capacity.  These include:

1. Cognitive signs, such as memory loss and difficulty understanding the conversation
2. Communication, calculations and orientation problems
3. Emotional signs that are out of character for your client.

It is essential for every financial professional to understand the complexity of financial capacity and appreciate how many parts it has. There are 9 domains of financial capacity.  You cannot determine if a person is impaired or not just by talking on the phone with her or having a brief meeting in which you  give information.

 Learning objectives:

1. Prepare yourself for the wave of aging clients by understanding the demographics of our aging population and the risks of dementia associated with aging.
2. Understand the 9 domains of financial capacity and learn how to spot problems with any one of them.
3. Be able to identify red flags of impaired cognition that should prompt you to act.
4. Develop a personal plan for what to do when you see warning signs of diminishing financial capacity

“Regulatory Changes Advisors Must Face With Your Aging Clients”

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Summary of course:

Update on what the SEC, FINRA an NASAA have in mind for financial professionals across the country in how they do business with clients over age 65. Review of the research these agencies have done, Model Rules regulators have created and what exemplary things they found firms and organizations doing for aging clients. They all want financial professionals to be more protective of aging investors. They envision mandates for reporting financial abuse of elders will and expand mandates into other areas. This course highlights areas regulators expect advisors to address, such as training in senior issues and increased communication with aging clients. It provides specifics on how to get ready for what the regulators want so that you will not have to scramble to comply with mandates.

Learning Objectives:

1. Understand the regulators’ concept of a “senior program” and how you can create one.
2. Know the Model Rules about financial abuse the regulators have already publicly posted.
3. Know what other firms across the US are doing about aging investors that you should be doing too.
4. Know what action steps you can and should take now to be ready for mandates.

“Best Practices For Communication Challenges With Senior Investors”

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Summary of course:

Aging clients present many challenges for their financial advisors. There are physical changes in hearing, vision and mobility as well as memory issues. This course shows the advisor how to accommodate for the changes that normally accompany aging so they can best serve older clients. It also offers strategies to address changes that are not normal, such as cognitive decline and loss of capacity for financial decisions. Talking to clients about these is likely to be uncomfortable. With the expertise of the psychologist who helped author this course, conversation scripts are offered on how to bring up and talk about delicate subjects tactfully. We illustrate advisor-client dialog with videos and demonstrate the best ways to talk to a client about giving up decision-making authority when impairment sets in.

Learning objectives:

1. Identify ways to accommodate a client who has physical impairments that are barriers to advisor-client communication.
2. Plan and know how to rehearse the words to use when it is time to approach a client with memory loss about getting a third party involved in financial decisions.
3. Manage client resistance to discussing these difficult subjects.
4. Use basic rules of communication that are proven success techniques to approach any difficult conversation with your client.

“Improving Intergenerational Wealth Transfers”

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Summary of course:

It’s pretty well known that intergenerational wealth transfers fail about 70% of the time. What makes the other 30% successful?  If you’d like to learn how you can help your client be part of one of the successful families, you’ll need to understand the critical parts of success and how to achieve them.  Communication is one of the things we talk about in this course. Who better to advise us than an experienced psychologist who has worked with families for over 40 years?  Dr. Davis has given us great information to help ease your way and give you confidence in creating a path to a wealth transfer that works well.

Learning objectives:

1. Facilitate advisor-led intergenerational communication.
2. Improve retention of managed assets by establishing relationships with client’s heirs.
3. Increase communication skills to build new client base of aging client’s heirs.
4. Implement specific, established and successful communication techniques.

“Best Practices For Success With Family Meetings”

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Summary of course:

Gain confidence in the sometimes uncomfortable arena of communication with your client’s family. In this course you will learn how to help your client develop a family mission statement, and how to create an atmosphere of learning for any willing heirs who will take over responsibility for a family’s assets.  There may be many different kinds of assets a high net worth family has.  Heirs can’t keep control over those different assets without excellent preparation.  We show you how to get that preparation in place and how to make sure it works.  We also teach you about the warning signs of a family that is too dysfunctional for you to be able to help with wealth transfer.  Your understanding and confidence in handling a family meeting will grow by leaps and bounds with this course.

Learning objectives:

1. To improve your understanding of how wealth transfers fail and how to change this
2. To enhance your ability to facilitate communication about transfer of wealth in families
3. To improve your ability to retain management of assets held by aging investors that they intend to pass to their heirs
4. To increase communication skills for developing trust between yourself, your client and her heirs

“What You Can Do About Financial Elder Abuse”

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Summary of course:

Financial abuse of elders has been called the crime of the century. A recent study shows that it costs seniors over $36B per year in the US. Every hand is needed to prevent and stop this crime of opportunity, including the help of financial professionals. We review the nine domains of financial capacity and describe the seven warning signs that your client may be a victim of financial abuse. We suggest ways that a senior-specific policy can offer advisors a clear path to follow when client conduct puts you on notice of a diminished capacity problem. We show you “hero stories” of financial professionals who took action and did stop abuse.

Learning objectives:

1. To improve your understanding of the enormity of the problem of financial elder abuse in the US.
2. To help you understand the legal options that exist to address elder abuse, both in criminal and civil venues.
3. To improve your understanding of how diminished capacity for financial decisions leads to vulnerability to abuse by predators.
4. To provide a clear understanding of the seven warning signs of financial abuse.
5. To provide you with an action plan that so you can take protective action for your clients who appear to be at risk.