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Our Story
In the wake of George Floyd’s death, and in the spirit of the Black Lives Matter movement, the BLX Internship Program was born. Our goal is to provide an opportunity for aspiring Black and Latinx financial planners to obtain an internship at a fee-only financial planning firm.
The financial planning industry is woefully underrepresented from a diversity standpoint. In fact, 73% of Certified Financial Planners are white males. We believe that in order to move the financial planning profession forward, we must be more representative of the population of our country.
Benefits of a more diverse profession
It is more profitable to have a diverse team. In a 2015 study by McKinsey, they found that companies in the top quartile for racial and ethnic diversity are 35% more likely to have financial returns above their respective national industry medians.
We believe that education isn’t enough and that there are more systemic issues at play. Our goal with launching the BLatinX Internship Program (BLX) is to provide an entry point into the financial planning profession to Black and Latinx students and career changers.
Umbrellas won't make it rain
In a 2011 study by the Insight Center for Community Economic Development, they found that the average family with a white head of household who was a high school dropout had nearly 50% more wealth than a black family where the head of household had a college degree. The narrative of “Work hard, go to school, get a good job, and everything will work out” actually doesn’t work! Just because you carry around an umbrella (a college degree), it won’t make it rain financially.
Compare Black families with a college degree with $23,400 of wealth vs. a white family with less than a high school education at $34,700 of wealth.
Our Partnership with NAPFA
We were very intentional in deciding to partner with NAPFA and fee-only financial planning firms because we believe this model reduces as many conflicts of interest as possible. All four of the co-founders run fee-only firms and we believe this is the future of the financial planning profession.
We are thrilled to partner with NAPFA to amplify this movement and expand the reach of this program. NAPFA is the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors and they represent over 4,000 members across 2,300 unique firms
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