Approved IAR CE Courses

A unique element of financial planning is that client relationships can last for a very long time, with many advisors assisting clients over the course of decades as their financial planning needs evolve in step with their personal lives. Due to this aspect of the planning relationship, it is almost inevitable that an advisor will encounter a time when a client is diagnosed with a terminal illness. And while it is important for the advisor to review technical areas of the financial plan (from cash flow to estate planning) with these clients, an even more critical consideration is how to best communicate and interact with a client whose thoughts are consumed by their illness. If the advisor isn't aware of the strategies for working with a client with a 'sick brain', all the best financial plans will be useless.

In this continuing education session, learners will review 2 Nerd’s Eye View blog articles: Helping Underspenders And “Savers” Understand They CAN Spend More With 4 Stages Of “Experiments”, Minimize The Data-Gathering Slog: Using “WOOP” Framework To Get Clients To Act, and From Risk Profile To Risk Partnership: 9 Questions To Understand Clients’ Risk Tolerance As More Than ‘Just’ A Score.

First, author Meghaan Lurtz explores how long-standing saver identities, doom forecasting, and the psychological discomfort associated with drawing down assets can inhibit retirees from spending in ways that align with their stated goals and values. Rather than focusing solely on technical withdrawal strategies, the discussion emphasizes the advisor’s role in identifying whether a client’s frugality reflects deeply held personal values or fear-based constraints.

In the next article, Sydney Squires examines how advisors can apply Dr. Gabriele Oettingen’s WOOP (Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan) framework to improve client engagement and follow-through during and after the discovery meeting. The discussion examines the behavioral science behind mental contrasting, the limitations of positive thinking alone, and the common “value-action gap” that prevents clients from acting on their stated goals.

Lastly, we turn back to Meghaan Lurtz to review how financial advisors can reframe risk tolerance as an ongoing partnership conversation rather than a static questionnaire score. The session explores the multidimensional nature of client risk—including tolerance, capacity, composure, perception, literacy, and related behavioral factors—and the limitations of relying solely on traditional risk profiling tools.

Getting clients to talk about end-of-life planning can be a tricky proposition, with clients often distracting, delaying, and denying their way to avoidance. Financial planners know that end-of-life planning can protect a client's family and assets for an inevitable future where they are no longer able to do so themselves. So, what is an advisor to do?Drawing on Terror Management Theory and extensive experimental research, Dr. Russell James explains the psychological effects of personal mortality salience on behavior and preferences. He then explains why this leads people to want to solve their death problem with avoidance or by seeking symbolic immortality through lasting social impact. Throughout the presentation, Russell highlights how advisors can work with, not against, these human traits by leveraging framing, language, and social norms to better guide clients through sensitive mortality-related decisions and improve engagement.

In this continuing education session, the learner will read 4 articles from the Nerd's Eye View blog: The Problem Of High U.S. Equity Valuations And How Advisors Can Factor In Current Evaluations Risks, Why Moving To A Lower-Tax State Doesn't Always Result In Lower State Taxes On Deferred Income, How Communicating Guardrails Withdrawal Strategies Can Improve Client Experience And Decrease Stress, and Why Guyton-Klinger Guardrails Are Too Risky For Most Retirees (And How Risk-Based Guardrails Can Help). Each of the 4 articles will discuss important aspects of retirement planning through the lens of investing and tax planning. In The Problem Of High U.S. Equity Valuations And How Advisors Can Factor In Current Evaluations Risks, Larry Swedroe, Head of Financial and Economic Research for Buckingham Strategic Wealth, explains how advisors can create more reasonable return assumptions for long-term financial planning. Swedroe explains the factors that have led to the high average equity returns from the last decade, why these high U.S. equity returns are not likely to continue into the future, and how to account for these high U.S. equity valuations in investment portfolios. In Why Moving To A Lower-Tax State Doesn't Always Result In Lower State Taxes On Deferred Income, Ben Henry-Moreland explains state taxation for deferred compensation and how to factor in state tax laws when relocating to minimize taxation on future retirement income. Derek Tharp is featured in 2 articles this month: How Communicating Guardrails Withdrawal Strategies Can Improve Client Experience And Decrease Stress and Why Guyton-Klinger Guardrails Are Too Risky For Most Retirees (co-authored by Justin Fitzpatrick). He explains the importance of explaining withdrawal guardrails to clients to reduce stress and provide clarity on how to cope with economic downturns in retirement. In the second article on retirement guardrails, the authors explain the strengths and weaknesses of the Guyton-Klinger guardrail method and explain how risk-based guardrails can be used to better manage retirement income risk.

In this continuing education session, we will review 3 articles on client communication in financial planning client engagements. In the first article, '3 Question Types To Go From (Just) Retained To Highly Engaged And Happier Clients,' Meghaan Lurtz, PhD, FBS details research on client engagement and opportunities for advisors to engage clients proactively. In the second article, 'Reframing Risk In Retirement As 'Over- And Under-Spending' To Better Communicate Decisions To Clients, And Finding 'Best Guess' Spending Level,' Justin Fitzpatrick, PhD, CFP, CFA explains how the success/failure framing of Monte Carlo analysis can cause clients to focus on the possibility of failure and how to consider reframing retirement income discussion into a framing of overspending or underspending. Fitzpatrick further discusses how advisors can help clients determine a balanced spending level. In the third article of this series, '5 Questions Using Risk Assessment Data That Help Advisors Understand Clients' True Concerns About Risk,' Meghaan Lurtz walks advisors through transforming the collection of risk tolerance data from clients into risk conversations to help advisors more precisely understand how clients are impacted by risk and how to best serve them.

In this course, financial advisors can learn about in-depth life insurance policy review and then practice with realistic examples of life insurance documents and client scenarios. This course covers a general overview of the life insurance landscape and delves into the intricacies of reviewing term life insurance and 4 types of permanent life insurance. In each module, advisors can practice document reviews and answer knowledge reinforcement questions to help solidify the concepts. The course concludes with a capstone assessment for continuing education.

A client’s tax return is one of the most information-rich and underused documents in a financial advisor’s practice. It can reveal held-away accounts, outside business interests, trust income, rental properties, and spending patterns that clients may never think to mention. Yet without a clear framework for reviewing it, it’s easy to scan for a few familiar numbers and miss the planning opportunities hidden throughout the form and its schedules. This gap can leave important assets off the balance sheet, let missed deductions and costly tax exposures go unnoticed, and turn a powerful discovery tool into a routine compliance document. This course gives financial advisors a practical, line-by-line approach to reviewing a tax return as a planner rather than a preparer. Following the actual structure of Form 1040 and its supporting schedules, advisors will learn which lines carry the greatest planning significance and which they can safely skip, how to calculate marginal and effective tax rates directly from the return, and how to translate what they find into meaningful conversations about income, assets, deductions, and tax behavior. Through a progression of real-world case study clients and application-based learning, participants will build a repeatable return review framework that lets them pick up any client’s return with confidence and find the planning opportunities that move clients forward.

Financial planners can learn an immense amount of information about a client's circumstances by reviewing an individual income tax return. However, the reality is that the complexity of a tax return doesn't conform neatly to typical income tax planning strategies. In this whitepaperclass, we look, schedule-by-schedule as well as line-by-line to address key parts of an individual income tax return. Advisors will learn which schedules, lines, and sections should commonly be reviewed, as well as the sorts of critical information and tax planning strategies (or potential tax problems) that can be identified by reviewing a tax return.

While retirement-income guardrails offer a convenient and easy-to-understand framework foradvisors to explain when a client would need to make portfolio adjustments to facilitate spendingduring retirement, certain guardrail models come with major limitations. For example, withdrawalrate guardrails are a commonly used framework, but they do not always accurately reflect a client'sdynamic income sources and actual spending behaviors. Risk-based retirement-guardrails, on theother hand, have the benefits of communication and clarity, while modeling a client's retirementincome sources and spending patterns more realistically.