The Director of Advanced Financial Planning serves as a subject-matter leader and authoritative voice on advanced financial planning, advice quality, estate planning strategies, and complex wealth solutions. This role defines, maintains, and elevates the firm’s point of view on financial advice and helps ensure clients experience a consistent, high-caliber planning experience.
As a senior member of the growth organization, the Director partners closely with Financial Advisors, Relationship Managers, Operations, Technology, and firm leadership to strengthen planning practices, expand advisor capabilities, improve client outcomes, and support organic growth. The role combines deep technical expertise with practice architecture, advisor enablement, technology ownership, and thought leadership.
Primary Responsibilities
Thought Leadership & Advice Quality
- Establish and refine the firm’s perspective on financial advice and advanced planning, including estate, tax-aware, retirement, business succession, philanthropic, and multigenerational wealth strategies.
- Own the firm’s financial planning framework, including methodology, standards, workflows, advisor guidance, and objective measures of advice quality.
- Serve as the standard-bearer for advanced planning best practices, ensuring they are documented, communicated, scalable, and consistently applied across the organization.
Advisor & Relationship Manager Enablement
- Partner with Financial Advisors and Relationship Managers to embed consistent, high-quality planning practices across client segments.
- Serve as a strategic coach and subject-matter expert on sophisticated financial situations, including participation in select complex client meetings.
- Lead training and adoption of advanced planning methodologies, tools, and technology to strengthen advisor capability, productivity, and the client experience.
- Review and analyze estate planning documents and planning structures for financial-planning purposes, identify considerations or gaps, and coordinate with clients’ legal and tax professionals as appropriate.
Organic Growth & Client Outcomes
- Collaborate with growth teams on initiatives that strengthen client retention, deepen relationships, and support new client acquisition.
- Identify emerging client needs and translate them into planning strategies, advisor education, tools, and service enhancements.
- Connect advanced planning initiatives to measurable improvements in client outcomes, advisor effectiveness, and business growth.
Thought Leadership & External Representation
- Represent the organization as an advanced planning subject-matter expert through client events, professional forums, media opportunities, and other appropriate external engagements.
- Develop high-impact thought leadership and educational content, including articles, whitepapers, presentations, and webinars, in partnership with Marketing and Compliance.
Planning Technology & Practice Innovation
- Provide strategic direction for financial planning technology, including platform selection, enhancements, integrations, and advisor-facing tools.
- Partner with Technology, Operations, and other stakeholders to ensure planning systems support the organization’s advice philosophy, workflow standards, scalability, and client experience.
- Drive adoption and continuous improvement so planning technology and processes deliver measurable value to advisors and clients.
Qualifications
- 10+ years of progressive experience in wealth management, financial planning, advanced planning, estate planning, or advisory leadership.
- Deep expertise in advanced planning topics such as estate, tax-aware, retirement, business succession, philanthropic, and multigenerational wealth strategies.
- Proven ability to influence experienced advisors, translate sophisticated concepts into practical solutions, and drive adoption of new practices and technology.
- Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, including executive communication, facilitation, public speaking, and thought leadership.
- Strong strategic thinking with the ability to translate conceptual frameworks into scalable, operational practices.
- Advanced planning credentials such as CFP®, ChFC®, CLU®, JD, CPA, or comparable credentials strongly preferred.
What Success Looks Like
- A clear and consistently applied organization-wide point of view on financial advice and advanced planning.
- Measurable improvement in advice quality and increased advisor adoption of advanced planning practices and technology.
- Planning standards, workflows, and resources are scalable and embedded into the overall client experience.
- Advanced planning capabilities contribute to stronger client retention, satisfaction, relationship depth, and new client opportunities.
- The organization’s reputation is strengthened through credible thought leadership, advisor expertise, and external representation.
Role Structure
This role is a senior individual contributor and enterprise subject-matter leadership position with broad influence across Financial Advisors, Relationship Managers, Growth, Operations, Technology, and firm leadership. The Director balances strategic leadership with hands-on execution, including advisor coaching, complex case consultation, framework development, training, technology decisions, and thought leadership.
The role operates with a high degree of independence, judgment, ownership, and accountability while building alignment across stakeholders and collaborating with legal, compliance, tax professionals, and outside counsel as appropriate. This role does not independently provide legal or tax advice unless separately qualified and authorized to do so.
