‘‘One of the problems advisers have is they don’t know when to keep their mouths shut,” says Deena Katz, professor of personal financial planning at Texas Tech University.
The 67-year-old, one of America’s most sought-after financial advisers, has chosen client communication as the topic for her latest book, due to be published next year.
“A good listener needs few words,” is the most important piece of advice she gives her students. “You ask any adviser when they bring on a new client what do they do, they tell their client all about their company. I don’t do that. I ask all about the client. It’s a book of conversations; how to have client conversations,” she reveals.
Katz, a recipient of an array of awards for her work in financial planning, is best known internationally for her book Deena Katz on Practice Management.
Published in 1999, while she was running Miami-based independent financial advice firm Evensky and Katz, the book aims to teach advisers how to run a business.
“My friend and I were on a panel together talking to financial advisers. In the middle of the debate she announces I am writing a book on practice management. So I had to do it,” she recalls.
She has since written eight more well-received titles, including Retirement Income Redesigned and The Investment Think Tank. Her success as an author propelled her career as an international speaker at financial planning conferences worldwide, including Australia, the UK, Singapore and South Africa.
Katz is due to speak at South Africa’s Financial Planning Institute’s annual convention in Cape Town later this year, where she will run a workshop on how small IFA firms can compete with larger wealth managers.
The two-day event will be attended by local advisers as well as a small contingent from the UK, Canada and the US.
Perfect partners
Katz is married to long-time business partner Harold Evensky, known as ‘the dean of financial planning’ for his equally illustrious career in financial advice that has included writing acclaimed books, international speaking, teaching and prominent positions on the Certified Financial Planner Board.
The pair teamed up in business prior to their marriage after Katz sold her successful Chicago-based advisory firm, the Financial Planning Network, in 1990 to move to Miami in order to be closer to her mother.
“My mother was retiring to Florida and Harold said, ‘why don’t you come and join us?’ I replied that I’ve always owned my own business so, if I did, I’d have to buy in as a partner, and I’ve always run my own business so I’d have to be president’.”
According to Katz, he called two days later and said, ‘How fast can you get here?’ Later that year they launched Evensky, Brown & Katz, where she served as president and is now chairwoman.
The firm became Evensky & Katz in 2004, after the retirement of the duo’s long-serving business partner Peter Brown.
The pair, who have two children and seven grandchildren, jointly received the prestigious Financial Planning Association’s Heart of Financial Planning Award in 2013.
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