Until Robo-Advisors Learn Empathy

The Social Security Administration’s 2018 Trustee report contains the same dire news as last year – the benefit program will run out of money in 2034. Some look at this distant date as a reason to remain calm, confident a solution will be found. “Despite the projections on the insolvency of Social Security, I do not hold the belief that Social Security will dry up entirely,” says Ryan Repko, a financial adviser for Ruedi Wealth Management, Inc. in Champaign, Illinois. “For better or worse, social security has become hardcoded in the American DNA, after all, it is not called the ‘3^rd rail of politics’ for nothing. No politician wants to be in office and have social security dry up, so something will have to change that will reform social security, to keep it intact for generations to come. That’s my humble optimistic view.”

Others deny the way the math is interpreted. “Social Security is definitively not on the cusp of insolvency,” says Glenn Sulzer, Senior Analyst in the Corporate Compliance division of Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory U.S. “The media hysteria that typically accompanies the SS Trustees’ Report ignores the fact that under current tax collections, the trust fund will be sufficient to pay 3/4 benefits for 75 years. The choreographed emergency is especially misplaced with those currently 50 and older, and even with respect to employees under the age of 50.

Click here to read the full story.

Trilogy Financial, with over $2 billion in client assets one of the largest financial planning firms affiliated with National Planning Corp., said on Thursday afternoon it was joining LPL Financial.

LPL in mid-August said it acquired the assets of National Planning Holdings Inc., an independent broker-dealer network with 3,200 advisers and $120 billion of client assets. The firms in the NPH network are: National Planning, Invest Financial Corp., Investment Centers of America Inc. and SII Investments Inc. Combined in 2016, they generated $909 million in revenues, according to InvestmentNews data.

Click here to read the full story.