Families with special needs children or adults must contend with a significant challenge: how to provide their loved ones with the resources to maintain quality of life for the long term. Although there’s no simple solution, special needs trusts have numerous advantages that can help provide economic security for beneficiaries and reassurance for families.

Taking an active approach to investment tax management is one of the best ways to consistently add value to your clients’ portfolios. Any outperformance realized is known as tax alpha—a portfolio’s excess return after taxes minus its excess pretax return.

Commonwealth partnered with Ash Brokerage to enhance the insurance marketing and operations functions available to our advisors. Ash Brokerage doesn’t just specialize in insurance; it approaches insurance with a passion that matches our own company culture, providing our advisors with untapped growth opportunities in offering protection products for their clients. I’m pleased to present the below post, brought to you by the specialists at Ash Brokerage, which discusses why now may be the right time to help your clients perform an insurance policy review.

As we all adjust to this “new normal,” many of your clients have likely begun to reflect on how they manage their lives and their finances. For some, job situations have changed. For others, priorities have shifted. And for many, their risk tolerance has evolved. Given all this, your clients may need an insurance policy review to ensure that their life insurance policies still align with their current goals.

The COVID-19 pandemic has touched virtually every facet of our lives—including wreaking havoc on the financial markets. By now, though, we’re well familiar with the effect turbulent market events can have to blur retirement goals. Just think back to the first weeks after the coronavirus outbreak hit the U.S.—plan participant trading activity was more than 14 times the average daily trading volume. So, how can advisors help plan sponsors and participants stay on course during periods of volatility? By keeping them focused on the long view.

The coronavirus crisis upended everything advisors understood about their daily lives and businesses. You had to quickly react to ease rising client concerns, follow orders to shut down physical operations, and accommodate a suddenly remote workforce. There was no time for planning or adjusting. No playbook to follow. But after a few uncertain months, positive lessons learned from the pandemic have started to emerge—and they are likely to affect how you operate, develop teams, and work going forward.