How “Robos” Can Know Their Clients
This column is about robo advisers. But let’s start with an ugly truth about the advisers, humans included, who are held by law to the fiduciary standard. They don’t always behave like fiduciaries—that is, always putting the client’s interest first—no matter what the...
Tales From the Dark Side of Prospecting
Whatever happened to all the cowboy stockbrokers who relied on chutzpah and grit to lasso clients? Their stories made us laugh even as we cringed at the shameless antics. Like Prospector Cat: Years ago, a broker drove to posh neighborhoods and released his cat to...
What Happens if My Client Gets Hacked?
Identity theft feels like a high-tech variation of the Malthusian catastrophe: This time, the growth of personal data is overwhelming our ability to protect it. Here’s one scary stat from Mark Goodman, author of Future Crimes. There’s a Russian crime syndicate with a database of 1.2 billion compromised user names.
Take the Power of Attorney Test
Powers of attorney are critical to wealth management. They’re one of the five pillars of estate planning, the others being wills, revocable trusts, health-care POAs and what I like to call “pull-the-plug directives.” But what if they don’t work? What if financial institutions don’t accept them? Think I’m kidding? Guess again…
Norb Vonnegut
The New York Times describes my novels as “money porn,” “a red-hot franchise,” and “glittery thrillers about fiscal malfeasance.” Through fiction I explore the dark side of money and the motivations of those who have it, want more, and will steamroll anybody who gets in their way.