As markets bounce back from spring turmoil to new record highs this summer, and growth of financial advisory firms continues unhindered by the purported threat of AI, the industry has shifted an ever-greater focus onto the challenges of scaling firms as they grow, and coming up with ways to tackle the emerging shortage of experienced advisor talent. The good news is that most advisory firms still retain sky-high client retention, which provides a steady runway for firms to adapt and expand capacity. The bad news is that it’s still challenging to attract and retain quality talent.
Our growth at Kitces.com has faced similar capacity challenges in recent years, amplified by our ongoing commitment not to use AI in the development of educational content… which means we have no choice but to continue to build our on-team talent, coupled with our network of industry experts, who can deliver human-expert-crafted content that is up to our Quality, Nerdy, and Relevant standards at Kitces.
Yet also similar to many advisory firms, we have found that our recent growth has increasingly been constrained by legacy technology decisions we made years ago that no longer served the current needs of the business. And so in 2025, we kicked off a two-year cycle in which we have been systematically rebuilding nearly all the core technology components of our business.
Last year, we started with a total from-the-ground-up rebuild of our Members Section, which now features a new CE catalog, new CE quiz system, enhanced reporting on the status of your CE programs and whether they’ve been submitted to the accrediting organizations, and an improved My Account interface to manage all of your various CE numbers. With our new framework built, we’re now also working on a number of additional enhancements, including:
a new “Research Scorecard” report that will allow advisors who participate in our research surveys to see how their firms compare to other (anonymized) advisor peer groups
updates to our Live Events page to make it easier to see all of our scheduled live Kitces offerings in one place.
We’re also excited to introduce two new programs getting underway in the second half of 2026: Level Up, and the Financial Advisor Technician podcast!
Our new Level Up program is specifically designed to help solve the industry’s talent (or what we believe is actually a training) shortage: Every other week all year long, we’ll conduct a live case-study reviews of real-world client scenarios, giving new advisors a chance to “get their rep(etition)s in” on more complex clients, with an opportunity to compare notes and role-play scenarios with peers, all guided by a Kitces instructor who will debrief the case study to highlight key planning opportunities, and how those recommendations could be framed and communicated most effectively to the client. This month, we’ll be starting a three-month pilot program for Level Up, which is already sold out, but you can sign up now for the waitlist as we prepare for a broader rollout in 2027!
Our other new launch is the Financial Advisor Technician podcast (or “F-A-T” for short), which will be our first podcast eligible for CFP (and other) CE credit! Hosted by our own financial planning nerd Adam Van Deusen, each week a new episode of F-A-T will interview the author of our Wednesday articles (on various advanced planning topics), exploring the important information and key insights, and how advisors can take action with their clients. And because our Wednesday articles are already CE-eligible (readers must successfully complete the requisite accompanying CE quiz), listeners to the F-A-T podcast will also be able to earn the same CE credit by logging into the Members Section to take the quiz! Stay tuned for the first F-A-T episode to drop on Wednesday, July 22!
In the meantime, we continue to grow our full breadth of CE, practice management, and advisor development programs now, including our series of nine on-demand Training Courses, quarterly virtual events including our two half-day, virtual Practice Management Summits (one on Marketing and the other on Financial Planning Value) and our two full-day CE Intensives (one on Tax and the other on Ethics to fulfill your CFP Ethics and IAR Ethics requirements), our bi-weekly webinars, growing Directors of Financial Planning (DFP) community and its monthly peer group meetings, and the full breadth of our daily articles and two (soon-to-be three) podcasts! And we remain an active provider for all of your (multi-designation/multi-license) CE needs, including CFP, CPA, all the designations from IWI, College for Financial Planning, the American College, and state-based IAR CE obligations.
Likewise, our own Team of Nerds continues to expand. We recently hired several new team members, including Director of Member Success Kristin Dammacco, Director of People Operations Libby Sparks, and Senior Technical Editor Natalie Trevisan, and are actively hiring now for a new Executive Assistant to work directly with yours truly, Michael Kitces! If you know someone who would be a fit for our open Executive Assistant role, or are wondering how you can get more involved with the Kitces team, you can also sign up for our separate Career Opportunities mailing list (via our Career Opportunities page) to be notified when new positions open up! And for those who don’t want to join the team full-time but would simply like to “Nerd out” with us for a bit and share what they do or know with their fellow advicers, remember to check out our “How To Contribute” page to see how you can engage with the Kitces platform as a guest writer, presenter, or podcast guest!
Throughout it all, we remain focused on advancing our core mission – to “Make Financial Advicers Better, And More Successful” – through our four strategic pillars of supporting ‘Nnovation of AdvisorTech tools, delivering insightful Education, conducting original advicer Research, and facilitating the Development of financial advicer skills across the spectrum of experience and firm sizes (and yes… our organizational strategy does spell N-E-R-D J). We look forward to continuing the journey with you in 2026 and beyond!
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