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Press Release: Covisum Collaborates with TruChoice to Help Financial Professionals Create Tax-Efficient Retirement Strategies

OMAHA, Neb. – Today, Covisum®, a financial technology company enabling thousands of financial professionals to help provide potential solutions for retirees and pre-retirees, announced a collaboration with TruChoice Financial Group, LLC (TruChoice), to provide TruChoice-affiliated, securities-registered professionals special pricing on annual subscriptions to Tax Clarity® software. Tax Clarity will allow financial professionals working with TruChoice to plan clients’ retirement income, manage withdrawals, and help minimize income taxes while gaining insight into other unseen opportunities to add dollars to the retirement strategy. Financial professionals can quickly and easily show clients the effect of self-employment tax, the dependent tax credit, and the saver’s credit as well as the impact of Roth conversions, and harvesting tax losses or gains. Additionally, financial professionals working with TruChoice will have access to other resources that address taxes in retirement, including: Live withdrawal strategy illustrations PowerPoint presentation with speakers notes Brochure White paper Calculators Income InSight® integration (multi-year Tax Maps) “We’re very excited to work with TruChoice," said Joe Elsasser, CFP®, Founder and President of Covisum. "We appreciate their continued commitment to helping financial professionals grow, and it’s a goal we share. This agreement will allow financial professionals to strengthen their value to existing and potential clients by showing how to make retirement decisions in a potentially more tax-efficient way.” “Tax Clarity is a perfect complement to our Marketing portfolio,” stated Brian Peterson, TruChoice President and Chief Executive Officer. “Covisum delivers a robust platform of technology with marketing to help financial professionals quickly identify sub-optimal tax situations in their clients’ retirement outlook.” ABOUT COVISUM Covisum®, the makers of Social Security Timing®, Tax Clarity®, SmartRisk™ and Income InSight®, powers some of the industry’s largest financial institutions and provides subscription-based software to thousands of advisors nationwide. Our team provides financial advisors with the software, training and support to deliver better retirement income plans and improve the lives of clients. As the name represents – “co” means joint or shared, and “visum” means vision – Covisum helps advisors and their clients create a shared vision of the future. For more information, visit http://www.covisum.com. ABOUT TRUCHOICE TruChoice is one of the largest distributors of financial services products in the insurance industry. They are designed to function as a foundation for the success of the independent financial professionals that they serve, leveraging the resources that only a large company can provide, while offering the individualized service of a much smaller one. TruChoice is committed to remaining an industry thought leader and innovator and will continue to use their unmatched service model to allow financial professionals to focus on what matters most: helping clients achieve their financial goals. Headquartered out of Minneapolis, Minnesota, TruChoice has a national footprint with locations in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Atlanta, Georgia, and Sacramento, California. For more information, please visit: http://www.truchoicefinancial.com.
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Perspectives Magazine: Post Secure Act—Roth Conversions or Life Insurance

The SECURE Act has created some really interesting opportunities for financial advisors who specialize in retirement income planning, especially when you consider that some of these changes can cause eventual sub-optimal tax situations for clients. Prior to the SECURE Act, Roth conversions had a substantial advantage over life insurance as a planning tool because although life insurance death benefits are tax free to the beneficiary, the beneficiary must the invest the proceeds somewhere, giving rise to the tax on growth that occurs during the beneficiary’s lifetime, compared to a much longer period of tax-free growth and withdrawals from the Roth. With the new 10-year limitation, the benefits of life insurance are now much closer to the Roth, particularly for clients with a conservative to moderate risk tolerance. For these clients, tax-deferred accumulation and tax-free withdrawals to basis and loans thereafter mimic the benefits of the Roth. A properly selected and structured life policy is likely to provide a reasonably similar internal rate of return to that of a mostly bond portfolio, particularly in rising interest rate environments. A need for protection against potential long-term care expenses can thus flip the advantage from the Roth to life insurance. Read the Perspectives Magazine article for a closer look.
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Retirement Daily: Should You Claim Social Security Early Because of COVID-19?

It appears that the Social Security system may run out of funds even faster than projected. While the last Social Security Trustees report indicated that funds would run out by 2035, some think tanks are suggesting that it could be as early as 2029 as a result of an influx of new Social Security claimants and reduced income from fewer people working due to the pandemic. Thus, many advisors are suggesting that it might be beneficial to claim Social Security benefits early. In this Retirement Daily article, Should You Claim Social Security Early Because of COVID-19?, Covisum® Founder and President, Joe Elsasser, CFP®, outlines why the “claim early because Social Security is running out of money” argument is often dramatically oversimplified, and potentially causes people to claim out of fear rather than a reasoned approach. "Even projecting this year’s recession as similar in scope to the Great Recession of 2008-2009, I still expect that 69% of benefits will be paid based on the current revenues after 2029. The most recent Social Security Trustee’s report suggested that 79% of benefits would be paid after 2035, without accounting for the pandemic and resulting economic impacts. Regardless of the estimate, it’s a far cry from the fear that Social Security would simply disappear. A more refined argument would be, claim early because benefit cuts are coming.”   The possibility of benefit cuts due to the insolvency of the Social Security system is not enough to suggest that most people should claim benefits early. Read the article to learn how taking a reasoned approach to Social Security claiming, even in the presence of the potential program shortfalls, is a much better choice than claiming early out of fear.
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In The News

ThinkAdvisor: Prep Your Practice Now for Future Market Volatility

This week in his Hidden Value column for ThinkAdvisor, Joe Elsasser, CFP®, talks about how the current economic situation is making some advisors rethink their processes and plans. Advisors who craft quality contingency plans for times of market instability instill confidence in their clients and help them avoid making rash decisions out of panic.  "Humans made the switch from a hunter-gatherer culture to farming, because farming provided a reasonable level of predictability. Financial planning is a lot like farming. A financial advisor should sow seeds of confidence by using the right process, with the right risk metrics, to build contingency plans before they’re necessary." Read the ThinkAdvisor article in its entirety. Are You Using the Right Risk Metrics? SmartRiskTM uses a heavy-tailed model to help advisors more accurately analyze portfolio risk to help clients avoid costly mistakes. In probability distributions, "heavy-tailed" distributions are those whose tails are not exponentially bounded. Unlike a bell curve with a "normal distribution", heavy-tailed distributions approach zero at a slower rate and can have outliers with very high values. In risk terms, heavy-tailed distributions have a higher probability of a large, unforeseen event occurring. SmartRisk helps advisors determine a portfolio’s downside potential, allows the advisor to set reasonable expectations with clients prior to the next downturn, and potentially make adjustments to mitigate the risk.  See the software in action. Schedule a live demonstration with our customer success team. 
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