Industry information and ideas to help financial advisors grow their practices by engaging corporate executives with equity compensation, managing their holdings and helping them to make prudent diversification decisions.

ISO Planning Guidelines: If your clients have Incentive Stock Options with low Insight Ratios, keep in mind that January is the optimal month to exercise and hold them for the one year holding period. This article on the StockOpter University explains why.

Equity Award Index Provide Insights into How Employee Perceive Their Grants: Each year companies grant more than $110 billion of equity compensation. But how much do employees value these awards? To find out, UBS surveyed almost 600 participants from a cross-section of industries, companies and service providers. The resulting UBS Equity Award Value Index found that the more vesting experience employees have with awards, the more they value them. The findings published in the UBS Participant Voice dive deeper into the characteristics that define the three distinct participant types, from how they feel about their personal finances to how they work with financial advisors.

Year-end Tax Planning Guidance. This is a good collection of articles and FAQs from myStockOptions.com. Even though it’s inevitable, taxation shouldn’t be the main driver of option exercise decisions or share diversification. With this in mind, consider the following investment oriented articles: The Secret to Profitable Option Exercise Decisions and How Do You Spell “Vested RSU”?

Slides Explaining What Advisors Need to Know About Equity Compensation: If you are responsible for coordinating your firm’s executive services program, you are probably tasked with making sure that client facing advisors understand the basics of equity compensation. This presentation can be delivered in less than an hour and contains a lot of what advisors need to know to assist executives with their company stock and options. It includes background on the industry, key concepts, basic taxation fundamentals, an illustrative case study and a list of resources.

5 Steps to a New Marketing Plan: Here’s a timely article from the Journal of Financial Planning that can help you to meet your goals in 2014. If your plans include marketing to corporate executives check out the Financial Advisor Resources on the StockOpter University or let me know if you would like to schedule some time to discuss ideas.

New RSAs ONLY Report Helps Clients to Diversify Shares: We recently created a template for individuals with only restricted stock/units and company “owned” shares (no outstanding stock options). This report is designed to facilitate prudent diversification decisions by valuing these holdings, illustrating risk/reward and proposing a decision framework. This new report template is available to all StockOpter.com advisor accounts.

Email Bill Dillhoefer at bdillhoefer@networthstrategies.com if you have any questions or ideas for future articles.

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