Journal of Financial Planning: January 2021
WHO: Skip Schweiss, CFP®, AIF®
WHAT: 2021 FPA President
WHAT'S ON HIS MIND: “We’re not going to become a profession recognized in 2021, but we can continue to move the ball down that field.”
VIDEO: The conversation continues. Visit our YouTube channel for an extension of the interview. Part One Part Two
There’s been a significant amount of transition since COVID-19, for both you and FPA. What lessons have you gleaned from all of this transition?
We’ve all had to learn a lot of lessons from this transition. It’s obviously affected everyone in the world, everyone in our country, everyone in our profession, and [everyone] in our association.
One of the things I take from this—when I allow myself to take a step back—is that about the time we think we have everything in control, something comes in from left field to just disrupt our lives.
And that’s certainly what happened in March of 2020. FPA, like everyone else, had to adjust, and we had to adjust very quickly. One of the first things we did was create a series of virtual forums where we invited industry leaders to lead discussions on different things—from how are you looking at portfolios right now to how are you running your business operations right now to how are you dealing with client anxiety right now. Those were really, really well received.
We were hearing that financial planning students were getting their internships canceled for the summer, and this was a big deal, in part because they need that to get through their course requirements. It’s extremely important for us to do everything we can to foster the next generation of financial planners. So with Hannah Moore’s leadership, we created the FPA Virtual Externship program in the summer, which was a huge hit. The many students and career-changers who participated in the program shared incredibly positive feedback. Now, we’re looking at ways to extend that into the future.
The whole pandemic disruption coincided with the initial pilot launch of our OneFPA Network, including the participatory governance element of that plan where we have our OneFPA Advisory Council consisting of a representative from a majority of FPA chapters.
I was the board liaison for that council this year and, boy, did I learn a lot from having that kind of engagement with the chapters and how they were adjusting to the disruption—and in the process, learning from each other about what was working well and what was not working so well. So in the face of a very sudden and severe disruption, I felt like the association reacted well.
How do you define FPA’s value in a post-COVID-19 era?
Aside from our initial reactions and adjustments, we are now looking ahead to what the world is going to look like going forward. Of course, none of us knows that perfectly, but it does appear that we might be heading for a world where, for example, in-person meetings are no longer the primary way we foster community within our profession and our association.
In listening to our chapter leaders and what’s working for them, we’re exchanging ideas about programming and how to create community.
Chapters, not surprisingly, felt some disruption moving their in-person meetings to virtual meetings, but a silver lining of that seems to be they’re getting higher attendance at the virtual events because [members] don’t have to physically travel to a meeting. That’s one thing we’re paying attention to—how can we extend that into the future?
We’re also looking at how we can reimagine our sponsor relationships. How can we give them equal—or even greater—value for their valued sponsorship dollars of FPA in a more virtual world as opposed to a more physical world? Many of the things we’re looking at right now are how we cannot just react and play defense to the disruption, but how can we play offense and come out of this even better?
The OneFPA Network remains a key priority for FPA in 2021. We’re entering the OneFPA Network assessment phase. What are some of the main priorities in this phase?
I’ve always been a big supporter of the OneFPA Network, which shouldn’t surprise readers and listeners because I was in the boardroom when it was developed and approved for rollout.
We heard it from some members—especially when they moved from one geographic region to another and joined a different chapter—and our sponsors, that it felt like we were many separate organizations, not one organization. We were doing things 86 different ways [at the time]. Every chapter had its own way of doing things, its own technology platform, its own finance database.
There are just more efficient ways to do things across the organization and to look and feel like one. Those were the set of drivers behind the OneFPA Network.
We found out early that people were more open to evolution than revolution in this movement, and that’s great. So we adjusted. We went into this pilot phase in 2020. I’m very grateful to the 11 chapters that raised their hands and said, ‘Yes, I’m willing to be part of a pilot.’ Anecdotal evidence has been really positive, especially from the community. They’re getting networking and closer affiliation with each other and they’re working together to build a more common platform and a common association.
We want to move beyond the anecdotal. We’re going to be soon surveying those involved to really get some quantitative feedback on how it’s going, where are our biggest successes, where are we still finding gaps, and areas of improvement. We will be sharing all that data with the membership and then continuing to build on our successes and improve upon areas where we can, so that we can continue moving toward being one entity.
What are some key advocacy priorities for FPA going into 2021?
I love your advocacy question—that’s where I spent the last 10 years of my professional life. There are so many, but let’s focus on a small handful.
It seems like whenever I talk to a member about advocacy, the one thing that seems to come up most consistently is being recognized as a profession. Included in that is title protection—if you’re going to call yourself a financial planner, you better have certain credentials and meet certain requirements in order to do that. That, for me, has really become number one after a lot of listening to our members.
Eventually, we want to really be considered as a true profession. We deserve to be like doctors, like lawyers, like teachers. Teachers are a profession—my daughter is a teacher—where they have certain academic requirements, licensing requirements, continuing education requirements—all those things that go with being a profession. That’s a longer-term goal. We’re not going to become a profession recognized in 2021, but we can continue to move the ball down that field.
While we focus in the near term on title protection as an intermediate step toward becoming a profession, ultimately, if we want to be recognized as a profession, we need to be willing to hold ourselves to the high standards that consumers expect when they’re interacting with a recognized profession.
We had elections last year and elections always bring changes and new policy proposals, so we will certainly be watching those very closely and participating in those policy conversations on behalf of our members—making sure we hold ourselves to the highest standard that we can for consumers.
As we head into the next half century, what do you think it holds for the financial planning profession?
We’re still very young as a profession compared to medicine, law, accounting, teaching, and others, so we should have some patience in this regard. But we should look ahead to the next 50 years with some sort of plan, strategy, and vision around how we can join those other professions. I believe firmly that everyone needs—and can benefit from—true expert objective financial planning services, just like they can medical services, and we deserve to be recognized as such. We need to have a vision for moving in that direction over the next 50 years.
FPA exists for its members as a 501(c)6, but we also keep one eye on the consumer and how we can hold ourselves to the highest standard possible, so that we’re worthy of being held up as a recognized profession in the eyes of consumers and really being accountable to them.
You were once named the ‘Fiduciary of the Year’ by the Committee for Fiduciary Standard. Why would you say being a fiduciary is important?
Before I begin, a shout out to the Committee for the Fiduciary Standard. What a great bunch of true, high-integrity professionals. Many times in this advocacy and fiduciary landscape, the word fiduciary is a legal word and consumers don’t understand that. Years ago, the Committee [for Fiduciary Standard] came up with this fiduciary oath written on one side of one piece of paper that the professional can sign for their client that lays out a set of commitments in plain English about how they’re going to handle themselves in their professional dealings with their clients. I love that.
More directly to your question, I go back to when my father died some years ago, and I discovered after his passing that I had been named co-trustee of a trust with a brother of mine for my mother. So I’m a fiduciary to the beneficiaries of that trust—to my mother during her lifetime, and to my siblings after my mother passes.
I’m not a practitioner, but I do know what it is firsthand to be a fiduciary, and that means to have a legal obligation to put others’ interests ahead of my own. It’s that simple. It’s a tremendously important thing—a building block in our becoming a profession—to hold ourselves to that standard where we say ‘Your interests come first, not mine.’
It’s tremendously important to act as fiduciaries to engender the trust of our customers in the larger public and of policymakers. Another hats off to CFP Board for taking the courageous step it did about a year ago to apply a fiduciary standard to financial planning activities. I think that’s another great step forward in the development of a profession.
You devote your time to your community, especially to programs like Habitat for Humanity and Special Olympics. Why is it important for you to give back this way?
I’m a baseball nut and I’ll use a baseball phrase that I think a lot of people have heard and that is, ‘If you were born on second base, don’t go thinking you hit a double.’
I feel like I was born on second base, but I always try to remind myself I didn’t hit a double; I think someone put me there. Many people aren’t born on second base. Many people are born in the dugout—or maybe not even on the team.
My parents instilled in me throughout my upbringing that we owe it to our society to make sure others have a chance to participate. I ultimately believe if everybody has a chance to be on that playing field, then it’s up to them—through their own efforts—to succeed; but everyone needs the opportunity and not everyone has that in our society.
I’ve been involved in a lot of charitable activities, whether it be through my kids’ school or church or their extracurricular activities, and others, to benefit people who weren’t born on second base.
I just would like to do whatever small part I can to make sure people at least have access to the playing field. That’s always been really important to me.
Who has had the most impact on your career?
There have been so many. I go back again to my parents. It starts with them because they gave me such great support all the way through my school years and demonstrated to me the values that they held dear, including integrity and work ethic and treating others with respect equally. And I’ve tried to role model those in my own life.
Coming from within our association, I’m going to shout out Ed Gjertsen [II, CFP®]. Ed is a former volunteer leader and former chair of the [FPA] board. He was the one who first tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Have you ever thought about taking a volunteer leadership role with FPA?’ and started my journey into FPA leadership.
I look at my wife who, quite a few years ago, gave up her career for the, in some ways, more intangibly lucrative career of raising our three children at home. Judging by how they turned out, I think her career was a success.
There are many, many people who have had great influence on my career. I tried to take just a little bit from different people that I interact with—like hey, I like that about that person, or I like what that person did in that situation—and just try to adapt those things for my own as I continue my own journey.
In the spirit of the theme for this month’s issue, what did you learn as a parent putting kids through college?
I would say I love 529 plans. They are what we used to fund our kids’ college education, in addition to their own efforts.
But, more broadly, your kids reach an age—and it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly when that is—when it’s time to back off a bit with the ‘you will do this’ and ‘you will not do this.’ Let them judge what kind of person they are and what they seem to be most interested in doing with their lives, and then just support them, help them, and provide them a little guidance. As they step off to college is especially the time to do that. I always told them that college is the bridge from childhood to adulthood. You have more independence, but you also have a safety net. If something goes wrong, if you make a mistake, you’ve still got a safety net there, as opposed to when you’re a full-fledged adult, maybe there’s not so much of a safety net.
So I just tried to guide them in those ways, help them make decisions where I could, and ultimately hold my breath and let them fly.
In Martin Seay’s Q&A in the January 2020 issue, he called your words of wisdom ‘Skip Schweiss-isms’. What’s your favorite ‘Skip Schweiss-ism’ that you’d like to share with our readers?
I learn from everyone I run into. I also am a huge book reader and I like to grab quotes from anywhere I find them—from a friend, a family member, a world leader, an athlete, whomever—and I actually collect these in a book. So any ‘Skip Schweiss-isms’ actually came from other people; I just tried to apply them in life where I can, and share them if I think it might help or amuse someone else.
I’m going to share one from Harry Truman. He said, “Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.”
I really like that one. You can read a lot, that doesn’t make you a leader, doesn’t mean you have to be a leader; but to be a leader, you probably need to read a lot.
I’ll conclude with this one. I consider myself a budding student of a Stoic philosophy, and one of the quotes in that realm that I like, and could never find the original source, says, “Happiness is a decision, not a reaction.”