Approved IAR CE Courses

For most financial advisors, compliance is simply something you 'have to do' to satisfy regulators while providing financial advice. But in practice, regulations are put in place to protect consumers, and understanding the principles that underlie those regulations can make it easier to adhere to the requirements. In this session, Chief Financial Planning Nerd Michael Kitces is joined by compliance experts Terria Heng, Max Schatzow, and Leila Shaver to discuss what RIAs need to keep in mind as they seek to create a positive culture of compliance, develop and operate within their compliance policies and procedures, and what to watch out for to minimize the risk of audit deficiencies when compliance reviews inevitably come.

This session uses a spouse's sudden transition into sole financial decision-making, brought on by a partner's incapacity, to explore the sequencing and psychological judgment that advanced-age planning demands. Early-career advisors typically default to leading with data collection and the financial plan, missing that a client who has never managed money independently may not be able to meaningfully engage with numbers until they feel emotionally oriented in their new reality. Participants will sketch their own approach to triaging simultaneous financial and emotional concerns, evaluate that approach against the case evidence, and rehearse client conversations where reframing and patience matter more than technical precision. By the end, participants should be able to recognize when a client isn't ready for the spreadsheet and sequence a planning relationship accordingly.

This session uses a business-owning client in his late 30s with a complex trust structure and a prenuptial agreement to expose a gap that appears in nearly every estate planning engagement: the difference between having documents and having an estate plan that is complete, funded, and actually works. Early-career advisors typically treat an executed estate plan as finished work; they review documents for content without verifying that assets are titled where the documents assume they are, and they miss the cascading legal consequences when that verification step is skipped. Participants will cross-reference document reviews, test them against a real titling gap discovered mid-engagement, and rehearse the client conversation that follows, uncovering a serious problem the client did not know existed. By the end, participants should be able to conduct a basic estate plan verification review, trace a titling gap through its downstream consequences, and communicate that finding to a client in plain language without triggering alarm.

This session uses a dual-income couple whose net worth is concentrated in one spouse's public company equity compensation to explore how advisors sequence a divestment plan around behavioral resistance rather than tax mechanics alone. Early-career advisors typically default to blanket diversification advice or reach for hedging strategies that turn out to be legally unavailable to a still-employed executive, missing that the real question is which shares to release first rather than how much to sell overall. Participants will sketch their own approach to prioritizing among several types of equity compensation, evaluate that approach against the case evidence, and rehearse the client conversations where a plan has to be calibrated for what the client will actually accept rather than what is technically optimal. By the end, participants should be able to rank a concentrated stock position by leverage and defend a recommendation that trades some optimal result from a technical perspective for actual client buy-in.

This session uses the retirement of a high-asset couple in their late 50s as the vehicle to explore tax planning opportunities that are uniquely available in early retirement and almost universally overlooked, specifically the 0% long-term capital gains rate, the ACA Premium Tax Credit, and non-conventional account distribution sequencing. The purpose is to surface two blind spots that early-career advisors commonly carry into this type of case: framing retirement income as a portfolio yield problem rather than a 1040 management problem, and defaulting to Roth conversions as the obvious pre-RMD move without recognizing when that default closes off strategies that save more tax with greater certainty. Beyond the technical content, participants will practice two behavioral experiences that rarely get rehearsal time — reframing a client's presenting concern without dismissing it and holding a sound recommendation under pressure when a client keeps returning to something they want that the numbers don't support. Participants should leave with a sharper eye for early retirement tax windows, a clearer instinct for when a conventional planning default needs to be questioned, and enough practice with the client communication moments that they're not encountering them for the first time when it counts.

This session uses a high-earning couple in their early 40s with nearly their entire net worth concentrated in a C-Corp startup position to explore the planning decisions that arise when a major liquidity event is imminent, and the impact of taxes are at a magnitude in the millions. Early-career advisors typically see a concentrated stock situation and default their recommendations to a sell-or-hold paradigm; they tend to miss both the qualifying criteria that could eliminate the tax entirely and the strategies that, when structured correctly, can multiply that elimination across the whole family. Participants will sketch their own recommendations, compare them against the expert path, and rehearse the client conversation in a small-group role-play. By the end, participants should be able to identify the QSBS fact pattern in a real client situation, articulate the stack-and-pack strategy to a skeptical client, and hold the hedging-versus-concentration frame under client pressure.

This session uses a financially disciplined couple entering retirement with a sizable but concentrated Traditional IRA balance and a decade-long gap before Social Security begins to explore how proactive tax-bracket management across that gap can reshape a client's entire lifetime tax bill. Early-career advisors typically treat these gap years as a quiet, naturally low-tax period to coast through, and when they do reach for strategies like Roth conversions or capital gains harvesting, they tend to apply them in small, half-hearted doses rather than committing to a real bracket-fill target, which at times can do more harm than good given how tax thresholds actually work. Participants will navigate withdrawal and conversion sequencing recommendations, evaluate them against the mechanics of the relevant tax thresholds, and rehearse the client conversation in which a large, uncomfortable tax bill must be reframed as a rational long-term trade-off. By the end, participants should be able to identify a client's pre-Social-Security tax window and build a conviction-based plan to fully take advantage of the opportunities within that window.

In this continuing education session, learners will review 2 Nerd’s Eye View blog articles: When Clients Won't Sell: What Actually Helps Clients Let Go (Of The Endowment Effect), and Working With 'Misengaged Couples': Ways To Engage Both Parties In Planning Conversations. In the first article, Dr. Meghaan Lurtz, a Professor of Practice at Kansas State University and a leading expert on the psychology of financial planning, examines why clients so often resist selling assets that a sound financial plan indicates they should sell. She explains the endowment effect, the well-documented tendency to value something more highly simply because one owns it, and distinguishes its three underlying drivers: loss aversion, ownership identity, and reference-price anchoring, illustrating how these mechanisms surface in common advisory situations, including family homes priced above market, concentrated stock positions entangled with professional identity, and inherited portfolios that carry emotional weight. She also explains why naming a client's bias tends to backfire, and instead presents five research-backed conversational tools, from future-self framing and the new money test to mementos, collaborative anchoring, and the empathy pivot. In the second article, Sydney Squires, Senior Financial Planning Nerd at Kitces.com, explores why one partner in a client couple often appears less interested in the planning relationship and how advicers can respond. Squires argues that the common "disengaged spouse" label can misframe the issue, since apparent withdrawal often reflects role specialization within the household or a mismatch in communication styles. Drawing on the conflict style framework presented by Sarah Asbedos and Emily Purdon in the Journal of Financial Planning, which maps individuals by assertiveness and cooperativeness, she describes how Avoiding, Accommodating, Competing, Collaborating, and Compromising styles can surface in meetings. The article also highlights the long-term risks of building a relationship with only one partner, and offers practical tactics that include setting participation expectations early, using intake assessments, asking open-ended goal questions, inviting quieter partners to speak first, using reflective listening with more assertive partners, and helping collaborative couples revisit past decisions without falling prey to the sunk cost fallacy. Together, the articles help advicers recognize the emotional and relational dynamics that can stall planning decisions, and apply practical conversational tools that move clients, and both partners in a couple, toward more grounded and collaborative choices.

After the release of the Final Regulations, post-death IRA distribution rules have become more complex, creating more opportunities for IRA beneficiaries to inadvertently be subject to a large tax bill. Planning for the use of a trust as an IRA beneficiary creates a whole new set of planning considerations to balance the benefit of control with the additional cost and complexity of trusts. In this webinar, Jeff Levine reviews the impact of the Final Regulations on IRA beneficiaries and then explains the advantages and disadvantages of using a trust as an IRA beneficiary. He further explains the lifecycle of IRA trusts, detailing how they are established, funded, and administered based on whether they are a conduit or discretionary trust. The presentation concludes with the top 5 mistakes to avoid when creating IRA trusts.