Finding the Planning in Financial Planning

• After four decades, the financial planning profession still lacks an overarching framework for organizing and testing the strategy-making (i.e. "planning") activities of its practitioners.• An integrating framework is proposed that consists of five modes of strategy-making: planner-driven, data-driven, policy-driven, relationship-driven, and client-driven.• Each of these five modes represent different relative roles for the planner and client in the planning process. The modes also fall along a parallel dimension of planning versus emergence.• The proposed model is tested against measures of client trust and relationship commitment and the policy-driven mode is found to be the most powerful predictor of both.• Client complexity is also analyzed as a predictor of client trust and commitment and it is found that trust and commitment are inversely related to the complexity of a client's circumstances.• Finally, a factor analysis of planner strategy-making activities shows that planners in independent firms tend to favor data- and policy-driven approaches and those practicing at large financial services firms tend to be more dominant in the planner-driven mode