The Exceptional Advisor Podcast

Investments & Wealth Institute
  • 4.5 (15)
  • Investing
  • Bimonthly

The Exceptional Advisor Podcast, produced by the Investments & Wealth Institute, is a conversation series for financial advisors who serve high-net-worth clients and want to sharpen how they practice. Each episode features a working practitioner, researcher, or industry leader on the topics shaping the profession: market outlooks, retirement income, investor behavior, building and leading advisory teams, earning client trust, and the role of AI in advice. Past guests include Michael Kitces, Liz Ann Sonders, Mark Casady, John Bowen, and behavioral finance researcher Herman Brodie. The show is built for advisors who already have the fundamentals and want the next layer of expertise — the kind that separates a competent advisor from an exceptional one. Expect practical conversations about serving clients with complex needs, standing out in a crowded market, and communicating your value in terms clients understand. The podcast comes from the Institute that administers the CIMA®, CPWA®, and RMA® certifications, and it reflects the same standard: advanced, practitioner-focused, and grounded in the decisions advisors make with clients every day. Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts.

  1. Oct 14 ·  Video

    What Your Clients Really Think About Your Credentials

    Julie Littlechild, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Absolute Engagement, has spent 25 years asking clients what they think of their advisor relationships.  Her annual survey of 1,000 high-net-worth (HNW) investors, conducted by Absolute Engagement on behalf of the Investments & Wealth Institute, finds that 87% say it is somewhat or very important for their advisor to hold advanced professional credentials, rising to 91% among investors with $5 million or more. Yet more than half say they don't understand what their advisor's letters mean.  Julie joins host Sean Walters, Chief Executive Officer of the Institute, to talk through what the 2026 High-Net-Worth Investor Research shows about client confidence, advisor expertise, and practice growth, and how advisors can explain their certifications in terms of what clients care about.  The conversation covers:  How to explain your certifications to clients: Tie each certification to a specific client need, such as preparing heirs for a wealth transfer, and cover the education, exam, and ethics standards as supporting detail. In the research, clients who understood their advisor's credentials were more likely to feel confident about their financial future.    Why clients refer a financial advisor: Credentials and good service make an advisor worth referring. The referral itself happens when a friend raises a problem, such as family dynamics around money, that the advisor has already solved for the client.    Do advisor credentials still matter to clients years later? Yes, and more to clients than to advisors. In Absolute Engagement's research, about a third of advisors said their credentials matter as much or more now than when they earned them, compared with 64% of clients.

    What Your Clients Really Think About Your Credentials

  2. Sep 14 ·  Video

    How to Talk to Clients About Politics with Jeff Bush

    Jeff Bush, Principal of The Washington Update and a nonpartisan authority on U.S. politics, tax policy, and the economy, shares his framework for talking to clients about politics, previews the 2026 midterm elections, and explains what a divided Congress means for tax and regulatory policy. The conversation covers: How to talk to clients about politics without taking sides: Politics comes up in nearly every client meeting now — Bush details his tips on when that's worth changing the plan and when it's just noise to manage.  What a Republican Senate majority through 2032 means for financial planning: Bush expects a narrow Democratic House and a Republican Senate that could hold through 2032 and explains why that multi-year math might matter to financial planning.   Where a divided Congress could still pass legislation: Bush sees Congress stalling on almost everything for the next two years, except a handful of issues, from housing to crypto.

    How to Talk to Clients About Politics with Jeff Bush

  3. Aug 10

    Where Asset Allocation Meets Client Psychology

    Christopher Geczy, Academic Director of the Wharton Wealth Management Initiative and the Jacobs Levy Equity Management Center for Quantitative Financial Research at the Wharton School, talks through why asset allocation still drives most of a portfolio's risk and what happens to that discipline the moment a client gets scared.   The conversation covers: Why the rebalancing plan comes first. Volatility can work in an investor's favor, but only if the plan for rebalancing exists before volatility hits—once it does, risk aversion spikes and rebalancing gets hard to do. The neuroscience behind FOMO and the panic call. FOMO sits near a pain center in the brain and carries a strong social component; the panic call that comes during a downturn draws on that same wiring. Running the outbound call. With three or four hundred clients, advisors have to rank who gets called first during a downturn, based on what they already know about each client in good times and bad.

    Where Asset Allocation Meets Client Psychology

  4. Jul 13

    Two Credentialing CEOs on the Future of Advice

    K. Dane Snowden, Chief Executive Officer of CFP Board, joins Investments & Wealth Institute CEO Sean Walters for a wide-ranging conversation on where the financial planning profession is heading. Two association leaders who have spent their careers building standards for the advice profession, Snowden and Walters cover AI's four possible futures, the problem of finfluencer noise, why the psychology of financial planning is the profession's most defensible skill set, and what it will actually take for advisors—new and experienced—to serve clients well in the decade ahead.    Their conversation covers:  AI as a tool, not a replacement. CFP Board's working group mapped four AI scenarios for the profession. The most likely outcome blends two of them—and in both, advisors who treat AI as a productivity tool rather than a threat are the ones who gain.  Finfluencers and fiduciary theater. Plenty of platforms and personalities now market advice as personalized. But many are built around engagement and product sales, not the client's actual interests. The case for specialty certifications. Why CFP Board added the Certified Investment Management Analyst® (CIMA®) to the accelerated education path and why the profession's future isn't fewer specialists but more advisors whose specialized expertise is grounded in a holistic, ethical framework.

    Two Credentialing CEOs on the Future of Advice

  5. Jun 9

    AI and the Meaning of Money with Mark Casady

    In this episode of The Exceptional Advisor, Mark joins host Sean Walters to discuss what AI changes about wealth management — and what it doesn't: Why the real advisor shortage is bigger than the headlines suggest, and what that means for firm leaders right now Why the advisor of the future leads with the meaning of money, not the management of it What the next five to seven years actually look like for the profession, and what to be doing about it today Required listening for any advisor or firm leader thinking about where this profession is headed.

    AI and the Meaning of Money with Mark Casady

  6. May 8

    The Future of Advice with Michael Kitces

    Michael Kitces, Head of Planning Strategy at Focus Partners Wealth, Co-Founder of XY Planning Network, and one of the industry's most recognized voices, joins Sean Walters on this episode of The Exceptional Advisor for a "This Or That" conversation on: Investments or wealth? Firms do both, but individual advisors are increasingly specializing in one or the other as investment management centralizes. Solo or team? Both paths are thriving, and it has never been more profitable or easier to run as a solo advisor, despite what mega firms want you to believe. Utopian or dystopian? Why Kitces is bullish on advice, even as AI raises the bar for everyone. It's a wide-ranging conversation with one of the sharpest minds in the business and a must-listen for advisors.

    The Future of Advice with Michael Kitces

  7. Apr 8

    How Great Advisors Build Trust With Herman Brodie

    Herman Brodie, behavioral scientist and Founding Director of Prospecta Limited, has spent years studying how people build trust and why they lose it. In this episode of The Exceptional Advisor, he joins host Sean Walters and shares insights for financial advisors navigating today's polarized, noise-filled world, including: Why salient headlines and changes draw client attention and how to redirect it How "behavior residue" and political polarization are showing up in client relationships How vulnerability outperforms self-promotion when building new relationships The importance of competence and benevolence in building trust This is the conversation every advisor needs to hear to understand what trust really means and how to build more of it.

    How Great Advisors Build Trust With Herman Brodie

  8. Mar 17

    What Makes an Exceptional Advisor with Libet Anderson

    What truly makes an advisor exceptional? In this episode of The Exceptional Advisor, Libet Anderson, Community Care Leader at Cetera, joins host Sean Walters to discuss what excellence really looks like amidst rising AI adoption and fiduciary expectations. She walks us through her career in the industry, the evolving standards of excellence, and what separates the best from the rest, along with how leaders can raise the bar across entire teams.

    What Makes an Exceptional Advisor with Libet Anderson
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Ratings & Reviews

4.5
out of 5
15 Ratings

About

The Exceptional Advisor Podcast, produced by the Investments & Wealth Institute, is a conversation series for financial advisors who serve high-net-worth clients and want to sharpen how they practice. Each episode features a working practitioner, researcher, or industry leader on the topics shaping the profession: market outlooks, retirement income, investor behavior, building and leading advisory teams, earning client trust, and the role of AI in advice. Past guests include Michael Kitces, Liz Ann Sonders, Mark Casady, John Bowen, and behavioral finance researcher Herman Brodie. The show is built for advisors who already have the fundamentals and want the next layer of expertise — the kind that separates a competent advisor from an exceptional one. Expect practical conversations about serving clients with complex needs, standing out in a crowded market, and communicating your value in terms clients understand. The podcast comes from the Institute that administers the CIMA®, CPWA®, and RMA® certifications, and it reflects the same standard: advanced, practitioner-focused, and grounded in the decisions advisors make with clients every day. Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts.

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