Michael Kitces: Moving the Industry, One Action at a Time

A prolific doer and thinker who’s passionate about moving the needle for financial advisors.

Michael Kitces is a Partner and Director of Wealth Management for Pinnacle Advisory Group, a private wealth management firm. He’s the co-founder of XY Planning Network which is dedicated to helping Gen X and Gen Y advisors serve their Gen X and Gen Y client peers with a fee-only monthly retainer financial planning model. It’s designed to be a turnkey financial planning platform where they champion financial planning for a younger demographic.XY Planning Network has grown rapidly, coming up on their five year anniversary with over 850 advisors.Michael is also the publisher of The Kitces Report & Nerd’s Eye View. He’s a partner at New Planning Recruiting and the Treasure of the Board of Directors of Washington Improv Theatre. Michael’s a public speaker on financial planning and practice management topics, as well as the host of the Financial Advisor Success podcast. Michael got into financial services when he was graduating college and a life insurance sales manager told him he should be a financial advisor because it required hard work and a high income. Despite his background in psychology, financial servicesare exactly where he landed.Related: Is the World of Financial Services Really Waking up to Diversity and Inclusion?Michael has always been intrigued and involved in gender and racial diversity. In fact, at a recent conference, an individual walked up to Michael and a group of women and asked, “Is this the Kitces harem?”. In response, Michael published a blog post asking for the appropriate response to these types of situations. He received a gamut of responses. From those, his biggest takeaway is that just by getting those to pause and think about the situation, is far more victorious than trying to get the conversation out there. Bottom line, let’s continue to have these conversations.