Featured Speakers



KEYNOTE PRESENTATIONS

Change, Choice, and Consequences:
Help Clients and Yourself Absorb Change, Make Good Choices, and Avoid Getting Stuck in Regret

Susan Bradley, CFP®, CeFT®, Founder, Sudden Money Institute and Financial Transitionist Institute 

Wednesday, October 28 at 11:30 a.m. EDT

As a financial planner you are in a unique position to guide clients through individual and collective life-changing events. You actively participate in the client’s experience of reestablishing order and predictability. Change demands new choices and there are always consequences. This session provides a customizable structure for keeping clients safe, developing a wide and long view of possibilities and choices, and supporting decisions that shape life going forward without regrets.

Learning objectives and takeaways:
  • How to use the creative force within disruption while keeping the client safe, building confidence, and developing a new narrative
  • Integrating a repeatable process to reframe tradeoffs and choices
  • Key elements of a Financial Transitions Plan not found in traditional financial planning

Even massive collective change—think pandemic—follows the universal patterns of disruption, change, adjustment, reimagining, and eventually a new set of norms. Disruption and change are now easy for everyone to see and feel. Clients' lives are, and will continue to be, in motion. 

CE Credit: 1 NAPFA CE Credit - Marketing and Practice Management, 1 NASBA CPE Credit - Communications and Marketing

About Susan:

Susan Bradley, CFP®, CeFT® is the founder of the Sudden Money® Institute (www.suddenmoney.com), which began 20 years ago as a community of practice seeking to better serve their financial planning clients by developing a process and tools for the personal side of money and for clients going through transitions. This think tank created the Certified Financial Transitionist® (CeFT®) designation, and a division for training and certification called the Financial Transitionist® Institute. Susan has served on the FPA’s National Board of Directors, she has served on the National Football League’s Players Association’s Financial Education Advisory Board, and she serves as the Dean of Transitions for the Council of Deans of the Purposeful Planning Institute. She is a founding member of the Nazrudin Project and has been studying the psychology of money since 1994. She is seen and heard frequently in the national media, including NBC’s Nightly News, CNN, NPR, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times. She is the author of Sudden Money: Managing a Financial Windfall (Wiley 2000), and her TEDx Wilmington Women talk is called, “Change launches you into the next great chapter of your life, whether you like it or not.”  She is the recipient of the Insider's Forum Iconoclast Award 2017.



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Year-End Planning in 2020: Including Planning for a Biden Administration

Robert S. Keebler, CPA/PFS, MST, AEP (Distinguished), Partner, Keebler & Associates

Wednesday, October 28 at 2:50 p.m. EDT

The first half of 2020 was an unbelievable time we will long remember. The unusual events make year-end planning more than routine. However, the second half of the year may hold even more significance. The election has great implications for our clients given the wide and growing gap in tax policy between the two parties.

As a financial planner, you need to advise your clients on the best course of action for the time remaining in 2020 and into 2021.

This session will provide ideas, tips, and tools to act on before year-end to minimize your clients’ tax liabilities. Bob will cover the following and much more:

  • A detailed review of Former Vice President Biden’s tax policy proposals and planning ideas—including a checklist of ideas
  • Bracket management, considering: historically low rates, the scheduled sunset, and the potential change under a Biden administration
  • Gain harvesting to capture a rate advantage
  • The mathematics of loss harvesting
  • Advanced Roth conversions
  • Rethinking itemized deductions
  • Funding tax-preferred accounts
  • Using 529 Plans for elementary and high school tuition
  • Charitable contributions
  • Opportunity zone investments
  • Section 199A Deduction planning
  • Using trusts to create additional income taxpayers
  • Year-end estate and gift planning
CE Credit: 1 NAPFA CE Credit - Income Tax Planning, 1 CFP CE Credit - Tax Planning, 1 NASBA CPE Credit - Taxes, 1 IRS CE Credit - Federal Tax Law Topics / Federal Tax Related Matters

About Robert:

Robert S. Keebler, CPA/PFS, MST, AEP (Distinguished) is a partner with Keebler & Associates, LLP and is a 2007 recipient of the prestigious Accredited Estate Planners (Distinguished) award from the National Association of Estate Planners & Councils.  He has been named by CPA Magazine as one of the Top 100 Most Influential Practitioners in the United States and one of the Top 40 Tax Advisors to Know During a Recession.  His practice includes family wealth transfer and preservation planning, charitable giving, retirement distribution planning, and estate administration.  Mr. Keebler frequently represents clients before the National Office of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in the private letter ruling process and in estate, gift and income tax examinations and appeals, and he has received more than 250 favorable private letter rulings including several key rulings of “first impression.”  He is the author of over 100 articles and columns and is the editor, author or co-author of many books and treatises on wealth transfer and taxation.  Mr. Keebler has been a speaker at national estate planning and tax seminars for over 25 years including the AICPA’s: Estate Planning, High Income, Advanced Financial Planning Conferences, ABA Conferences, NAPEC Conferences, The Notre Dame Estate Planning Conference and the Heckerling Estate Planning Institute and is the immediate past the chair of the AICPA’s Advanced Estate Planning Conference.



Planning for Retirement Benefits in a Post-SECURE World

Natalie B. Choate, Esq., Of Counsel, Nutter McClennen & Fish

Thursday, October 29 at 11:00 a.m. EDT

Three major new developments in planning for retirement benefits! The SECURE Act upended classic estate planning techniques by replacing the “life expectancy payout” with the “10-year rule” for most beneficiaries. The CARES Act cancelled required minimum distributions for 2020 and provides tax breaks for coronavirus-related distributions. Plus, there are new IRS life expectancy tables!

Natalie will discuss:

  • What to tell new clients about their options for retirement benefits
  • Reviewing existing estate plans—don’t change the document, change the plan!
  • How does the 10-year rule work for individuals? Trusts?
  • The four different sets of minimum distribution rules for the five categories of “eligible designated beneficiaries” who still get the life expectancy payout
  • Alternatives—charitable trusts, Roth conversions, annuities?
  • SECURE effect on pre-2020 deaths
  • CARES cancels RMDs: Planning implications and the effect if you already took RMD
CE Credit: 1 NAPFA CE Credit - Estate Planning, 1 CFP CE Credit - Estate Planning, 1 NASBA CPE Credit - Specialized Knowledge, 1 IRS CE Credit - Federal Tax Law Update

About Natalie:

Natalie Choate is a lawyer with the Boston firm of Nutter McClennen & Fish. Her practice is limited to consultations on estate planning for retirement benefits. Her book Life and Death Planning for Retirement Benefits is a leading resource for estate planning professionals.

Ms. Choate is a fellow and former regent of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel and former chairman of its Employee Benefits Committee. She serves as an editorial advisor for Trusts and Estates. Named “Estate Planner of the Year” by the Boston Estate Planning Council, she is listed in The Best Lawyers in America. The National Association of Estate Planners and Councils has awarded her the “Distinguished Accredited Estate Planner” designation.

Her articles on estate planning topics have been published in ACTEC Notes, Estate Planning, Trusts and Estates, Tax Practitioners Journal, and Tax Management. Ms. Choate has lectured in all 50 states, Canada, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia, and has spoken at the Heckerling, Notre Dame, California, and Southern Federal Tax Institutes, among others. Her comments on estate and retirement planning have been quoted in The Wall Street Journal, Money, The New York Times, Newsweek, Forbes, Financial Planning, and Financial World.



Bringing Your Best in Challenging Times

Mitch Anthony, Founder and President, Advisor Insights, Inc. 

Friday, October 30 at 1:00 p.m. EDT

“We are now in a bull market for building relationships.”—Mitch Anthony

What we’re experiencing now is unprecedented, but we have all faced fear, confusion, anxiety, and panic in the past. Those who pull through times of crisis are led by sound principles, a positive attitude, and the ability to listen intently and deliver empathic advice. In this keynote, Mitch Anthony––a reassuring source of wisdom and guidance to advisors for the last 20 years––shares the following guideposts with financial professionals:

1) How You Show Up Matters

  • Revealing the characteristics leaders demonstrate in times of chaos and uncertainty
  • Learning the “do’s and don’ts” when talking with clients
  • Getting—and understanding—the story of how your clients have been impacted

2) What You Deliver Is Vital

  • Delivering substantive value in moments like these
  • Agreeing on a sound fiscal philosophy
  • Helping clients focus on their long-term perspective while dealing with their immediate fears
CE Credit: 1 NAPFA CE Credit - Marketing and Practice Management, 1 NASBA CPE Credit - Communications and Marketing

About Mitch:

Mitch Anthony is the founder and president of Advisor Insights Inc., The Financial Life Planning Institute, ROL Advisor, and Life-Centered Planners (UK). He is recognized around the globe for his pioneering work in life-centered planning. For two decades, Mitch and his team have provided training to individual advisors and major organizations throughout the world.

Mitch is a consistently top-rated presenter who has been named “one of the most meaningful speakers in financial services today” and hailed as one of the industry’s top “Movers & Shakers” for his pioneering work. He is a sought-after expert for the media and a regular columnist for Financial Advisor magazine. His columns have appeared on CBS MarketWatch and in the Journal of Financial Planning. Mitch is also host of the daily radio feature, “The Daily Dose,” heard on over 100 radio stations nationwide.

StorySelling for Financial Advisors, cited by Financial Advisor magazine as the number one “must-read” book for financial professionals, is an industry standard. In addition to The New Retirementality (now in its 5th edition) and Your Clients for Life, Mitch is the author of many groundbreaking books for advisors and consumers, including Defining Conversations, The Financial Professional’s StoryBook, Your Client’s Story, Selling with Emotional Intelligence, The Financial Lit-Kit (The Cash in the Hat, The Bean is not Green, and Where did the Money Go?), and Life-Centered Financial Planning (Fall of 2020).