Ep 68: Our Onboarding Process at RPA Wealth Management
The X's & O's
If you have never worked with a financial advisor before, it can leave you wondering what to expect during the onboarding process of becoming a client.
In this episode, Matthew Theal, Brent Pasqua, and Joshua Winterswyk walk you through the process of what it's like to start working with their team.
Matthew, Brent, and Joshua discuss:
How they apply a seven step financial planning process
The structure of each meeting with you
The first questions they will ask you and how your responses determine a financial plan
How they communicate with you
And more
Resources:
Connect With RPA Wealth Management:
The Hosts:
Brent Pasqua, Matthew Theal and Joshua Winterswyk
Transcript
Welcome to the Retirement Plan Playbook with Brent Pasqua, Matthew Theal and Joshua Winterswyk from RPA Wealth Management. In this podcast, we cover current events, retirement planning, straps. And provide you with the tools to help you build a successful retirement playbook in any political or financial landscape.
Join Brent, Matthew and Joshua as they navigate the issues that can make the later stages of your retirement plan, challenging and help you create the best Retirement Plan Playbook. Now let's get to the show.
Hello, and welcome to the Retirement Plan Playbook with Brent Pasqua, Matthew Theal and Joshua Winterswyk from RPA Wealth Management, gentlemen. That is so good. We'll be back with you. How are you? Uh, we're doing great. Aric, really excited to be here. The shows that have been a lot of fun on sad that this is the last one.
Great to hear from you and talk to you, Aric. Yeah, I've been looking forward to it all week. Yeah. What w what do you mean the last one? What, why is it the last one? Oh, well, we did this, this series of three, and then, um, you know, we're thinking maybe we take the show back. Um, but then we're kind of debating.
Should we bring you back? Because like we're getting great feedback. So for now it might be the last one. This is fine. I don't need to be here. I mean, I thought you were like saying this your last one. I'm like, no, come on guys. You guys are fantastic. So. I know that you're going to keep on doing this, this, this is something that's a passion for you.
We've talked about that on the previous two podcasts. But today we're actually talking about your onboarding process when somebody called in and it's a good match. And you're like, okay, let's, you know, begin working together and they're saying, yes, let's go start working together. We're going to go through that process.
You got. Ready let's do it. All right. Well, man, I want to ask you first, what happens after a client signs with RPA? What, you know, after the, you know, what's the onboarding process? Yeah, so I'm hoping they're as excited as we are to start to get to know them and learn about their financial lives. Um, but we have to do some onboarding steps first.
And the first step is we send out a DocuSign packet and if you never use DocuSign, it's really easy. It's just a computer software comes to your. Um, you'd get to read the agreements and PDF form, and then you digitally sign. And once you do that, we've agreed to work together. And then we follow up with a welcome email.
And in that welcome email, there's a link to create your financial profile on our online software we use. And you could think of that kind of like your portal. It's your website, your own personal financial way. And in that email, I also usually send a list of documents that we want uploaded into a secure vault.
And this vault is kind of like Dropbox or box or Microsoft one drive if you've ever used that. And an example of some of those documents might be your tax return, your 401k statement, your Oregon statement, um, maybe your social security or your pension statement. If you qualify for that And then after that we get together and meet Josh and Brent, and we start building out the financial plan.
We start putting your facts in the software, and then we'd either bring you in office, or we do a zoom meeting and we do what we call as our fact check meeting. And we make sure we understand your financial life really, really well. And then once that's done, we add you to our client email list and you'll start receiving monthly emails from.
Yeah, that's fantastic. I think that for those that have not used those programs that you're talking about, they're safe, they're secure. It's been a fantastic way for businesses to do business and have signatures very easily without having to send anything through the mail or, or that old school style.
So I, I love the fact that you guys are using great technology in this process. So Josh, after a client is onboarding what's it like to go through the financial planning process? Great question. Yeah, we actually followed the seven step financial planning process, um, that the CFP board created. So it used to be six steps.
They actually added a seventh step that we're following. And so we start with just understanding the client's personal and financial circumstances. So really getting an idea of what you're at, Tom it's in that discovery meeting in that fact check meeting that we're going to really analyze all of your.
Uh, and then next we're going to select and identify your goals. This is really important in the financial planning process is really having an in-depth conversation about a client's goals, putting terms to them, putting dollar amounts to those goals as well. Just very important because it's kind of hard to plan for the future.
If we don't kind of have an idea of where you want to go, then the next step in this process is going to be to analyze current course of action. So really understanding. What you're doing right now, where you're at, what your cashflow looks like, and what strategies are you just personally implementing into your current financial plan before we make any suggestions or recommendations?
Then once we do that, we have a really good understanding of where you're at. So we create strategies and recommendations for alternate course of action, but this is really testing the what ifs testing strategies to maximize the financial plan, provide value and efficient. And that next step is going to be after that is to present our recommendations.
So once we've kind of tested, um, the new course of action, we'll actually have our planned recommendations for you that we've collaborated on not only with our team, but now with you, the client. And then after those recommendations are shared with the client, this is the six step six step and that's to implement the financial planning strategies and recommendations.
And for example, this can be, you know, we recommend that your investment portfolio go from being moderate to more aggressive and helping you actually implement those changes within an investment portfolio. It could even just be a tax strategy or maybe even, you know, implementing. You know, additional coverage for one of your insurances that may be under a covered.
Uh, one of the last steps in here is going to be to monitor your progress and continue to update your financial plan. And it's very important to do so. Once the plans created, so many variables have changed or can change throughout your financial planning process and you know, really important to continue tomorrow.
You know, that it's kind of like, and I always tell this to my clients, an airplane can pretty much fly itself. Right. They got GPS in there, but for some reason they still have two people in the cockpit, the captain and, the assistant captain or, or whatever it is, the vice captain. Right. And over the course of a flight, um, there's going to be wind speed and that's going to slightly knock the plane off its trajectory.
Right. And then the captain just kind of brings the plan back, playing back, and then. Once they are to the destination, they actually have to land the plane. That's pretty much all they do is an airline captain. And that's kind of like what financial planning is. There's always going to be something that happens where you get knocked off course a little bit.
In 2008, it was a big stock market drop. Today everybody's talking about interest rates and inflation and it's our job as the planners to help course correct that. So, let me ask you this. I want to go back to one of the ones you said that if my numbering system was correct, I think it was a re run number three, which was your analyzing current course of action, meaning finding out what they're currently doing.
Give me an example, because I'm assuming a lot of people come to you with zero course of action or their course of action is just I'm living day to day kind of thing. I don't know what I'm doing. So one example could be, um, their current 401k contributions. It's a very easy one. Maybe the. Maxine and, or getting close to Maxine it.
Um, but their portfolio is not set up properly. Um, they're, they're taking too much risk or not enough risk. A great example of not enough risk is a lot of people look at the returns of that stable value funds in almost every 401k plan these days, and usually pays about one or 2%. They think that's a good rate of return because their buddy told them that the stock market's going to crash any day now.
And so they put all their money in. And from there you know, we're like, okay, well, that's what you're currently doing, but you could actually take a little bit more risk. You know, you've got 15 years till retirement, 20 years till retirement. Why, why are you in this fund? That's only getting one or 2%.
Hmm. Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. So after you've created a plan, what happens next? So after you create a plan we, in that those planning meetings start to have discussions around. Uh, whether or not the client is going to want or need professional investment management ongoing to, to really align with their financial plan.
And when we do have those discussions with them, if they decide that they want to have professional management done, uh, we manage our client's accounts at Charles Schwab. So we custody the accounts at Schwab. I means the clients receive their statements from Schwab. We do the trading through. But where the actual advisors that are managing the accounts through Schwab.
And, uh, once we start that process with them, then we go through investment philosophy and we'll discuss our investment philosophy. We'll break down our portfolios and, um, we'll start to discuss in more detail, the allocations and risks that we think should align with their financial plan, meaning how much stock versus how much bond.
When we make adjustments to the portfolio and what we're looking for in the portfolio, and a lot of the interlining workings and details of the portfolio, we have a lot of those discussions in that, that next meeting with them. And then we also start to have a discussion on how we build that portfolio to match up with their goals of their plan.
So for example, like let's say the client is going to retire in two years and we know they're going to need $2,000 a month from their portfolio. We start to strategically align their portfolio to align with needing that monthly cashflow. And so there's a lot of ongoing discussions about how we're going to create that monthly income for them, so that it's ongoing for the rest of their life and making sure that that portfolio is matching up with what they're going to need.
Hmm. That's interesting. So that being said, how often does a planner meet with a client who does investment matters? So we meet with our clients anywhere from two to four times a year, depending on the client. And when we meet with them, we go through a number of steps in those meetings. And we do those meetings either in office or via zoom.
Uh, we've been doing, as we talked about in LA last podcast, we've been doing zoom for many years and doing virtual meetings that way, but a lot of meetings are conducted in the office and we have everything up on the screen so that they could see it. And we have a whiteboard in here. And so we can go through in great detail.
The review of those investment management. Okay. So w what happens in a review then? So in a review they're structured into, let's just say, you know, the first meeting, second meeting and third meeting of the year, but in every meeting, regardless of what meeting that we're in, we update the balance sheet, which means we'll update any of the data entries that are inside their financial plan that may have not been updated automatically.
So let's say a client has an outside savings account or checking account. That's not auto updating into the plan. We'll update all the assets inside the balance sheet. We'll update all the incomes that may have changed or may be changing that may impact their cash flow report. And then we'll also start the meeting with any discussions about any financial questions that they have or goals that they have that may have changed.
And then in every one of these meetings, we always go through the portfolio and discuss the performances. We break down the performances year over year. If the client has been with us less time, we go by quarter to quarter. And then we look at the allocations of how much is in stock and how much has been in bonds.
If the market has had enough movement, uh, is it necessary for us to consider rebalanced? So those are all very critical aspects that we have to in every time. And then we also go through where we are in the economy and the market update. So, you know, those are critical as well, but if we're doing the first meeting of the year, some of the things that we really like to go through is taxes because, you know, in April taxes need to get filed.
We go through the expenses that we may be considering the client's going to need for the first half of the year. And then the goals for the second half of it. And then we also like to talk about, make sure that we're planning financially for any summer trips. Cause if somebody is getting, if somebody retired, I mean, one things that they're looking forward to is those trips that they take.
And so we want to make sure in that first half of the year, that we're planning for those trips. And then in the second meeting of the year, we'll go through the cashflow projections. We spend more time on financial planning. Now we'll focus on if there's any debt that needs to be paying down. The clients discussing, moving, um, any strategic distributions or withdrawals that we want to plan for.
And then also, you know, obviously if retirement is on the horizon or they're considering retiring, and then we start that process. And then in the third meeting of the year, uh, we work on contributions and distributions, which is making sure that clients, if they're over 70 to start taking the requirement of distribution, We'll do a state planning and we'll work on the goals for the following year.
I think I'm going back to what you said. Um, and you kind of brushed over. Cause I mean, the reviews are so detailed, but one thing that I know the clients all love is when we start going over our slides on the economy of the soft market, because it seems like every meeting clients are coming in and they're scared and they're scared because they're hearing something on TV.
They're hearing something from their neighbor or their cousin Vinny and. They needed clarity on the current economic and financial situation. And we show these charts that are, or our data and like the light bulb flashes like, oh, you know what, you're right. The market's not going to crash. And even if it does well, Hey, it's a buying opportunity for me or, yeah.
We've had inflation before and it didn't really impact people that much. And the, you know, it usually ends with them asking, Hey, can we take those sides home? Like we want to show other people. And I think what happens too is like the numbers don't lie. So if you show statistical data on where we're at and what has historically happened, um, it could put actually things in perspective rather than making any emotional decision.
Oh, totally. And I think that what's also just important is to see the effects within your financial. So if you don't have a balance sheet built and you're not actively managing like the values of all of your accounts and how they're correlated to each other and actually putting, you know, what the news is, reporting relative to your actual plan, then you don't really know how it's affecting you.
I feel like, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but a lot of times clients come into review meetings and they're like, it's not as bad as I thought. Yeah. And I think what's also scary as like, let's say somebody just retired and now you're having this massive market. Correct. They're thinking well, you know, what I had three months ago is not what I have today and the projections we looked at when I retired as different than they are probably right now.
And so that fear factor may begin to set in, but by doing all of this planning, I mean, where we understand that through someone's retirement, you're going to have multiple times that the market is determined to decline and we're prepared for that. And we're preparing always ahead of that. Staying proactive.
Well, that reminds me of when my kids were growing up and I had to have a discussion with them because they would, you know, they'd see things on the news, just little glimpses. They didn't, it wasn't like they were watching it a lot, but I had to help them to understand that when you're watching the news.
That news channel is there to sell advertising space. You know? So at four o'clock in the afternoon, this is the story I told him. I said four o'clock in the afternoon. You're going to see a little blip that says 10 things in your refrigerator that can kill you tonight at 10 o'clock. Well, now I can go near my fridge for six more hours.
Right. So if we listened to that kind of stuff, it does right there is that fear. That's kind of built into it because they have to get you to watch the show to sell that advertising. And so they need, you know, and as they've grown up and as they're now young adults, they understand, they have to find mediums like podcasts, like this podcast.
Talk to them about truth and don't instill a bunch of fear to sell a product. You guys are here to educate, and there are a lot of other places that they can get good education without it being, you know, a fear factor or something that's gonna make them make a poor decision based on emotion instead of, some factual information that they can get.
Good sources. So I so funny that you brought that up because that's a memory I hadn't thought of for a while, but yeah, it just drove me crazy that he was just like, please just stop, just turn it off. So, all right. Well, I know that there's time in between these meetings that you're having. So Joshua, what kind of you know, when, when you're in between meetings, how do you communicate with your.
Uh, podcasts. We, we love I'm recording our podcast. And I think this piggybacks to what Matt was saying, you know, really hearing from your advisor who is working on with your plan with you and creating these strategies, but to hear from them more often and tuning into our podcasts can really give, you know, our clients a peace of mind to just go through some hot take headlines.
Some retirement strategies is a great way to continue to do. Communicate with us and hear us is through this podcast. So a hit subscribe to continue to listen to us. We also do a newsletter. So our clients will not only get you know, or have, uh, availability to listen to our podcast.
But through our newsletter, we'll communicate, um, just updates, uh, also market events that we, you know, have commentary on and it also include, most of the times are linked to our podcast. Clients can continue to listen in. I think the podcast has been so outstanding for us to be able to communicate to people and have people understand on what's really going on in the world.
And is that going to impact them from a financial or investment standpoint? Because, previous, if something were to happen, everybody's probably thinking the same thing or having the same questions. And then, you know, you would have multiple people calling in asking those questions, but now. We're we always try to stay ahead of that.
We get a good feel of what people are feeling based on what's happening at that time. And we can address all of that through the podcasts and keep people understanding on really what's, you know, what are the numbers behind that and how can we actually help people get through? And what news is actually important.
You know, there's so much news out there that isn't like we just talked about, so they can actually see from us what we're watching, what we're listening to and what our thoughts are just very impactful. Yeah. Well, we've spoken a lot about how you guys are reaching out to clients and communicating with them.
And one thing that I heard earlier in this discussion was, you know, when life events happen, when things happen, maybe, the planes off course a little bit, and we're going to correct. So what kind of events do you want your clients to be reaching out about? You know, obviously a sudden inheritance is probably on that list of things that you're going to talk about, but what other things do you think that should be reaching out to you?
Great question. Any changes in your financial life? I mean, this can be as small and as purchasing a car, you know, right now we can see cars are, are expensive and it's a lot more of an expensive decision than it was. Um, but these are things that can really impact your future. Especially if you're heading into retirement, are the things that come to minor, you know, you're paying for a child's.
You're switching jobs later in your career. Um, these are all great examples of when we want our clients to reach out to us because these decisions can play a big role in the future of your financial plan. And we want to be well aware of them. We want to help you with them and advise you through all of these types of.
Anything with a large financial number interest rate, like let's, let's talk through it together cause we can help understand. And especially, you know, now with interest rates moving higher, I mean, Josh and I were looking for cars the other day and we're getting quoted rates at six and a half percent with perfect credit.
I mean, we haven't had to deal with that in ages and it makes the decision, because of the climate and it changing economically. The decision about even moving out of state changes, right? So you're selling your mortgage here in California that has a 3% mortgage rate, and you're moving now your mortgage rates going to be potentially five or 6%.
So what does that calculation, what does that spread of difference? And is it still a good move for you? And I think too, what happens with a lot of these like life events? Is it something where somebody needs to just talk it through with somebody. And with somebody else that just has a perspective to look at all of the options.
Because I think once you just kind of talk it through with somebody else, you can bounce the ideas off each other. That's how you find the best solution. Having a think partner. Absolutely. A financial counselor. Hmm. Well, I'm, I'm not suggesting that you change your business model in any way, shape or form, but maybe if you were to add a service of, can you guys reach out and tell my wife, I need to book.
Maybe that's just, I don't know how it fits in the financial plan, but if you could make it fit, that may be a service that a few people might take advantage of. Anyway, you can find the best way to make it fit. How about that? There you go. It's going to be a very small boat gentlemen. So if there's clients listening right now, how do they reach out to you?
Or how should they reach out to you? If they do have some sort of event that they think they need to do? So the two best ways to communicate with us when we don't have a meeting coming up is going to be a phone call. Um, and you could just dial the office and, um, Paulino and most likely pick up and she'll direct the call to, to me, Brent or Josh.
Or if the question's not too detailed, she's more than capable of hands. Or you could email us directly and we'll answer back in an email or we might even say, Hey, you know what? This is a little bit more complex. Why don't we move your meeting up or add another meeting to the calendar and get you into the office to go through through this, on the financial planning software and on the whiteboard.
All right, gentlemen, I want to wrap this podcast up. We really dove deep into the client experience for your business, but I want to switch, I'm going to flip the coin on you, if you will. What, what businesses are you a client of that offer you your favorite client experience? In other words, what businesses are you part of that, that, uh, you've really had a good client.
I'll go first. Um, I'm a big four seasons guy. I all, the four seasons hotels are amazing and they have the best service in the world. There's even been a book written about, about how to give the four seasons service. I just went on a trip, uh, about a couple of months ago, and I'll say the service wasn't quite as good as it was a pre 2020.
But I think they're probably just working out the kinks and trying to new employees. But it, it's just that kind of next level where they're anticipating your needs and you're not telling them what you need. They're anticipating it and taking care of it. Oh, I'm not surprised. Matt, not surprised that your four seasons you talk about four seasons a lot in this office.
Um, my, my best experience though is one that I continued to go back to, um, because we're season ticket holders to. It's actually a sports team. So it's LFC, it's the MLS soccer team in, in downtown LA. Um, and ever since we started, I mean, the first introduction to the stadium and to the team and just even the onboarding, it was all digital.
So it was very modern. So it is an expansion team. So it's only started, uh, you know, a few years ago. And every time I go back, I just enjoy it. They're constantly, you know, making upgrades and changing out vendors and making that client experience better. And I just have just such a great time. Me and my wife, and I know probably Matt can put his co-sign on this, but, uh, just a really, really good client experience from start to finish.
We need to work on parking. Yeah. Parking's a mess down there. I will say that's gotten a little worse, but you know, once I'm at the stadium I'm, I'm entering and walking through, I'm smiling the entire time and that's how I know. It's good. I think for me, it's not necessarily just a specific business. I think it's.
Any business that says what they're going to do. And then they actually follow through and do it the way that they say, and they show up on time and they're efficient with their customers. And they do really good work and they make the experience. You know what it should be. I have a high expectations on how things should be.
And we treat our clients like that. They have, I want them to have the four seasons experience. I want them to know that we're prepared for every meeting, um, because that's what I like. And that's what I expect when I do business with somebody else. Um, I feel like a lot of businesses have gone away from that.
That's not us, my expectation whenever dealing with anybody else's extremely high. And I think that also goes back to how we treat our. That's fantastic. We'd wrap up this podcast, guys. Thank you so much for your time today. This, this was. Thank you, Aric. Thank you. Thank you. Lots of fun. You bet.
And for the listening audience, as we said at the beginning, this is not the end of the podcast. These guys are going to be going on for quite some time. They've got a lot of information they're going to be covering. So please subscribe. And I'll talk about that in a moment, but if you have any questions, if you have any thoughts on what your future is, maybe it's something that you have a friend or family member that they've been talking to you about it.
Um, give them the guy's contact information and. I do want to ask you for that right here at the end. How do they reach out to you again? Uh, just to, to start this conversation, if they're not currently working with somebody or if they want a second opinion. Yeah. So there's a couple ways you could do that.
Uh, first way is go to RPA wealth dot. And, um, on the website, you can book a call with a financial planner and it'll just be a 30 minute intro call and we'll discuss anything you want to discuss as financial related. Um, and then go from there. Another way is you can email us@infoinfoatrpawealth.com. Uh, shoot us over your questions and we'll happily get back.
Yeah. And if you're from the four seasons and you're interested in sponsorship, or just talking about their experiences, you can call into anyway, just getting, I'm not, not begging for sponsorships here. All right. Uh, guys, again, thank you so much for this podcast. I appreciate it. Thank you. You bet. And for your listening audience, thank you so much for tuning in and listening to the Retirement Plan Playbook podcast with Brent Pasqua, Matthew Theal and Joshua Winterswyk.
If you have not subscribed to the podcast yet, please click the subscribe. Now button below this way. When the guys come out with a new podcast, it'll show up directly on your listening device. This makes it really easy to share these podcasts with your friends. Again, thanks for listening today for everyone at RPA Wealth Management.
This is Aric Johnson reminding you to live your best day every day. And we'll see you next time.
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