5 White Paper Ideas for Private Wealth Managers in 2019

If you’re a financial services marketer, 2019 should provide no shortage of opportunities for you to show your expertise and weigh in on topics that your clients are curious about. As we head into what should be a pivotal year for financial markets and the U.S. economy, our latest e-book features 19 ideas for topics that will be ripe for white papers, bylined articles, and other forms of thought leadership in 2019. In a series of upcoming blog posts, I plan on writing about different white paper and other forms of thought leadership ideas for different segments of the investment management industry.

Previously, we wrote about ideas for the institutional asset management industry, and in future blog posts we will write about ideas for investment banking, private equity, venture capital, and professional services. Of course, if you want to read all 19 of my ideas for financial marketers in 2019, you can download our e-book at the end of this post.

For now, here are five white paper ideas for financial marketers in the private wealth management industry for 2019.

1. What the Rise of Robo-Advisors Means for Individual Investors

As more and more wirehouses and RIAs add automated, lower-cost algorithm-based portfolio management capabilities, this trend is doing more than just putting downward pressure on the fees that human advisors can charge. The move toward robo-advisors is causing investors, particularly millennials, to question whether humans are necessary for portfolio management and financial planning. As a result, financial advisors need to be prepared to talk about the value that a human advisor brings to the relationship. Rather than sit back and wait for these questions to come in, proactively writing about the strengths and limitations of these automated platforms can be a powerful way to educate clients—and justify your fees.

2. Investing in Private Equity and Alternative Assets

As correlations among stocks and bonds have increased over the past several years, high-net-worth investors are increasingly looking for alpha from low-correlation asset classes and non-traditional investment opportunities. With the trend of many high-growth companies such as Uber and Airbnb staying private longer or eschewing IPOs altogether—although that appears likely to change in 2019—public equity markets can no longer be seen as the default location for your wealthy clients’ assets. Private wealth managers would be wise to explain to clients the mechanics, risks, and potential rewards of investing in private equity, hedge funds, and other alternative asset classes. These alts could be particularly valuable additions to your clients’ portfolios when we enter the next bear market.

3. Retirement Investing in a Rising Interest-Rate Environment

Now that interest rates and inflation are increasing, investors—especially those who are in or nearing retirement—will have a lot of questions about what this means for their portfolios. The Federal Reserve has increased short-term interest rates nine times since 2015, and the central bank has signaled that it’s likely to raise rates another 2-3 more times in 2019. This is a great opportunity to provide historical context for today’s interest-rate environment and discuss the importance of revisiting asset allocation decisions each year.

Remind clients that the sub-3.0% rates for the 10-year Treasury note seen over the last several years are extremely unusual when put in larger historical context, and explain how the rising equity valuations seen over the past decade have been driven, in part, by artificially low interest rates.

4. Tax Reform’s Impact on Philanthropy

By doubling the standard deduction and limiting deductions for state and local taxes to $10,000 per tax return (not per individual), the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is likely to significantly reduce the number of Americans who itemize their deductions. About 30 percent of tax filers itemized their deductions before tax reform, and the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimated in early 2018 that number could drop to roughly 10 percent with the new law in place.

Still, it remains to be seen how this will influence people’s charitable giving decisions, as donors give for a host a reasons beyond the tax benefits. As an advisor, however, you should educate your clients about how the new higher standard deduction affects the net tax benefits of their charitable gifts.

5. The Fiduciary Rule Gets a Makeover

Although the Trump administration and the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court have put the kibosh on the Obama administration’s 2017 “Fiduciary Rule”—which would have forced financial advisors and brokers to put their clients’ interests before their own when providing retirement investing advice—momentum for a similar measure remains. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has since released its own version of the rule, dubbed “Regulation Best Interest,” or REG BI. The new measure, like the previous rule, would require broker-dealers to act in the best interest of retail customers when recommending securities transactions, but consumer advocates argue that absent the “fiduciary standard” prominent in the previous rule, REG BI doesn’t go far enough.

Regardless of where you as a financial services provider stand on the issue, it will be important to get out in front of it with clients who are likely to have many questions about what the details of these regulations mean for their investment decisions and their relationship with their advisors.

In my next blog post in this series, I’ll provide marketers in the investment banking and private equity industries with three white paper ideas they can use to ignite their content engines in 2019. Until then, download our free e-book that covers all 19 white paper ideas for financial marketers in 2019.     

About the Author Scott Wentworth is the CEO at Wentworth Financial Communications. He collaborates with a team of writers and editors at Wentworth to help professionals across the financial services industry build their brands by creating investment-grade white papers, bylined articles, newsletters, blogs, social media posts, and other forms of content marketing.