Sarah McSpiritt
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Special Needs Planning Insights
Breaking Barriers: Celebrating Women’s Vital Roles as Disability Advocates
During Women’s History Month, we celebrate the accomplishments of women and take this opportunity to reflect on their contributions to the betterment of society. Included amongst these women working to improve the lives of others are women who advocate and care for others, specifically individuals with special needs. Caring for a family member living with disabilities can lead to several challenges, and one of the key aspects these women caregivers must consider is how to secure benefits that protect the financial future of their adult children with disabilities.
Here are some important points for women to consider when applying for Social Security benefits:
Understanding and Qualifying for the Benefits
Benefits require individuals to meet specific criteria. It’s important for women applying for these benefits to evaluate the criteria and consider whether their adult children with disabilities meet the requirements.
Application Process and Benefits
Understanding who to contact, the necessary documentation, and how to schedule an appointment are key aspects of ensuring adult children with disabilities receive the appropriate benefits.
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Ethics In Financial Services Insights
Insights and Highlights: AI Ethics in Financial Services Summit
Held as an immersive and educational meeting of financial experts spanning diverse corporate roles, the panel-led discussions explored the pivotal concept of trust in AI within the financial services industry. Key discussions encompassed:
- The ethical risks of AI in finance: From fairness concerns to biased algorithms, including potential pitfalls and how to mitigate them.
- Restoring trust through responsible AI: Best practices for developing, deploying, and governing AI ethically and transparently.
- The future of AI in insurance underwriting: Insights into the latest regulatory updates and ethical considerations in this critical area.
During our productive roundtable discussion, issues regarding transparency, mitigating bias, and the necessity for standardized practices were highlighted. The dialogue underscored the significance of employing data ethically to cultivate consumer trust. There was consensus on the importance of collaborative efforts to develop trustworthy AI solutions that ensure fair and responsible practices within the insurance industry in particular.
Panel topics included:
- AI Regulation Update
- Jillian Froment, Executive Vice President and General Counsel, American Council of Life Insurers (ACLI)
- Kaitlin Asrow, Executive Deputy Superintendent, Research and Innovation Division, New York Department of Financial Services
- Stephanie Schmelz, Deputy Director, Federal Insurance Office U.S. Department of Treasury
- Self-Regulatory Approaches to AI Governance
- Moderator: Sophia Duffy, JD, CPA, AEP®, Associate Professor of Business Planning, The American College of Financial Services
- Anthony Habayeb, Co-founder & CEO, Monitaur
- Reva Schwartz, Research Scientist, National Institute of Standards and Technology
- Fireside Chat
- Arezu Moghadam, Ph.D., Managing Director and Global Head of Data Science, J.P. Morgan Asset Management
- Marty Edelman, Senior of Counsel, Paul Hastings
- Unpacking “Fairness” in Insurance
- Moderator: Azish Filabi, JD, MA, Associate Professor of Business Ethics, Executive Director, The American College Cary M. Maguire Center for Ethics in Financial Services
- Lisa A. Schilling, FSA, EA, FCA, MAAA Director of Practice Research, Society of Actuaries Research Institute
- Peggy Tsai, Chief Data Officer, BigID
- Case Study - AI Governance in Life Insurance
- Azish Filabi, JD, MA, Associate Professor of Business Ethics, Executive Director, The American College Cary M. Maguire Center for Ethics in Financial Services
- Sophia Duffy, JD, CPA, AEP®, Associate Professor of Business Planning, The American College of Financial Services
The summit provided valuable insights into the evolving landscape of AI regulation and ethics, emphasizing the importance of collaboration, transparency, and responsible AI practices.
Stay tuned for forthcoming insights highlighting specific discussion topics from our esteemed panelists, including regulators, researchers, and industry leaders.
To learn more about AI in financial services, you can explore further with research from the Center for Ethics in Financial Services.
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Shares: Let’s Talk Taxes
Join our host Michael Finke, PhD, CFP® and Jeffrey Levine, CFP®, CPA, PFS, CWS, AIF, RICP®, ChFC®, BFA™, Chief Planning Officer at Buckingham Wealth Partners, for a detailed conversation on what financial advisors get right and wrong when thinking about tax planning, as well as key strategies to help your clients keep more of their hard-earned money.
Jeffrey Levine, CFP®, CPA, PFS, CWS, AIF, RICP®, ChFC®, BFA™ is Chief Planning Officer at Buckingham Wealth Partners, working closely with the Buckingham team to create a seamless and enjoyable experience for clients that makes it easy to plan and instill confidence as they work towards their most important goals. He serves as a technical resource for advisors and the firm’s primary thought leader regarding evidence-based planning concepts and strategies. He excels at distilling complex financial laws and policy into understandable resources. His work at Buckingham gives him the ability to train and educate hundreds of advisors and support them in their pursuit of helping clients fulfill their financial dreams. Levine is a nationally recognized thought leader within the financial planning community. He is the lead financial planning nerd for Kitces.com, home of the popular Nerd’s Eye View blog, and the founder of Fully Vested Advice, Inc., which provides financial education and consulting services to industry professionals. He is a regular contributor to Forbes.com, as well as various industry publications, and has promoted retirement and tax education on television stations such as CNBC, Fox Business News, CBS and PBS. He is regularly sought after by journalists for his insights and is frequently quoted in publications throughout the country.
Any views or opinions expressed in this podcast are the hosts’ and guests' own and do not necessarily represent those of The American College of Financial Services.
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Mark McLennon, Seasoned Tax and Estate Planning Professor, In His Own Words
In March, McLennon joined The College as a full-time assistant professor in tax and estate planning and also serves as the Clark/Bardes Chair in Retirement Planning and Non-Qualified Deferred Compensation. Students in the CFP® Certification Education and Chartered Financial Consultant® (ChFC®) programs will benefit from his immense knowledge in business planning, estate planning, executive compensation, life insurance planning, retirement planning, and vast experience having served in a variety of positions over a 25-year successful career in financial services.
We posed a few questions to McLennon, and in his own words, you can learn more about his journey back to The College as a full-time faculty member and what he enjoys most about working with students.
1. How has The College impacted your career in financial services?
My experience with The College began as I pursued my CLU® and ChFC® designations over 25 years ago while transitioning from corporate tax into an "Advanced Planning" role at a major financial services firm. Despite taking every trust, estate, and tax class I could at my law school and working as a research assistant for the tax professor, none of that prepared me as much for the practical and real-world client/advisor issues I would face as did The College's curriculum.
The knowledge and credibility that came with achieving those designations and the great people I subsequently met through The College have served me well in the varied corporate and client-facing roles I have taken on. Over the years, as organizer and host of several wealth management and financial planning conferences, I have also had the privilege of working with some of the distinguished faculty of The College. I first began teaching at The College about five years ago and am now very excited to be doing that again as a full-time member of the faculty.
2. What are today's most significant challenges and opportunities for financial professionals?
Advisors need to know or access relevant information from multiple disciplines to provide the type of holistic advice clients expect as the marketplace has responded to such demand over the years. Combine that with the time needed to truly know your clients, much less acquire new relationships, and the significant challenge for financial professionals is how to best utilize those limited working hours.
Of course, no one can be expected to know everything, and bringing in outside expertise is something savvy clients have come to expect. The good news is that opportunities exist to acquire timely, relevant knowledge through programs such as those at The College, where one can also get assistance identifying situations where outside expertise is warranted.
3. How do The College's CFP® Certification Education and ChFC® Programs work together to enhance advisors' skills?
Both the CFP® and the ChFC® programs cover the core knowledge that clients come to expect when financial service professionals hold themselves out as dedicated to providing a higher level of expertise.
The College's requirements are the same across the two programs with one additional specialized course needed for the ChFC®. It is how that knowledge is applied in practice that has somewhat differentiated the two over the years, as each has its own unique background and history.
4. How is The College ensuring that students who enroll in the CFP® Certification Education Program achieve success in the CFP® exam?
There is deep and continuing coordination between the particulars of the programs at The College and the ongoing requirements of achieving the CFP® designation. The College is very much invested in the ongoing success of its students, and maintaining the curriculum to help students succeed with the exam is a priority while still emphasizing the critical importance of the application of that knowledge in practice.
5. What do you enjoy most about working with The College's students and being part of The College's community?
I most enjoy seeing that light bulb go on over students' heads. A few subject matter areas in the financial services world have historically seemed daunting to students, even those who are experienced or "seasoned" financial advisors. I like to relay stories to my classes about how I would initially dread getting calls on certain topics, like ESOPs or generation-skipping taxes for example, as a newer Advanced Planning attorney as I felt out of my comfort zone.
However, I add, I chose instead to step back, take some time, and break down these "daunting" concepts to their core components, thus replacing that dread with the anticipation of helping someone else get past their anxiety over the issue. That is one of the things I enjoy most about working with students at The College: taking what may seem a difficult concept at first, breaking it down to its core components, shedding a little light on what something truly means, and shining a larger light on its application in practice.
Being part of The American College community has been a great experience for me, and I know my colleagues feel the same way about the importance and satisfaction of getting through to students and helping them help their clients.
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