Vanguard hires ex-Barron's, ex-Fido 'thought leader' and CFP for mission impossible -- to better speak to RIAs after years of viewing third parties (and their fees) suspiciously

The Vanguard Group can not live on a low-fee message alone, so it is hiring a wealth wordsmith to court high-fee RIAs in their own lingua franca.

The giant, Malvern, Pa., manager of $12 trillion named former Barron's editorial director Beverly Goodman as its new head of thought leadership and content marketing for financial advisor services, in an Apr. 20 hire.

Vanguard is going to need her help to develop a symbiotic relationship with advisors more akin to Schwab and Fidelity.

The magnitude and importance of the challenge of becoming the liaison between asset management's largest fiduciary proselytizer and the largest pool of fiduciary advisors proved irresistible to Goodman who had thrived in a similar role at the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association (TIAA).

“The opportunity to join Vanguard and help build a new thought leadership function serving advisors and their clients was impossible to pass up,” Goodman says in a Jul. 12 LinkedIn post, the first formal public mention of her hire.

Goodman has her work cut out for her.

Vanguard Founder John ‘Jack’ Bogle's creed was that much thinking was overthinking when it came to investing. So, a Vanguard “thought leader” may have been anathema to him. 

Of course, he came from an era of excessive commissions, conflicts and sky-high active management fees.

Elevating Vanguard's voice

Vanguard has yet to respond to a request for comment. but it is moving “to improve its communication with financial advisors,” says Jeff DeMaso, publisher and editor of the Independent Vanguard Advisor newsletter in an email exchange.

It has “long leaned on its Advisor's Alpha [coaching], but a year ago, Vanguard launched a podcast aimed at financial advisors. It seems to be doing more marketing — or at least I'm hearing a lot of their ads on the financial podcasts I listen to,” DeMaso says.

"In short, while Vanguard's brand is strong, there is a sense that they can't just rely on it – they need to do more to compete" for advisor market and mindshare."

A job description for the role, posted Jan. 24, made no bones about needing a superstar who could think, speak, write “to strengthen Vanguard’s credibility and influence” with financial advisors.

“The head of financial advisor services thought leadership and content marketing is responsible for shaping and elevating Vanguard’s voice in the advisor marketplace,” the advertisement states.

“This leader translates market dynamics, investment insights, and practice management expertise into clear, compelling content that resonates across broker-dealer, RIA, and bank channels. They will direct a cohesive content ecosystem, spanning digital, events, and multimedia, to strengthen Vanguard’s credibility and influence.”

It is unclear precisely to whom Goodman will report, although DeMaso expects her direct line manager to be either head of financial advisor services, Amma Boateng, or global head of marketing and communication Chris McIsaac.

Proven ‘alpha’

Fiduciary advisors and their proven “alpha” value are on the rise at Vanguard– despite being (100 basis points) often 10- to 20-times higher priced than a Vanguard portfolio (potentially 10 basis points). 

A year ago, Vanguard actually published a study that quantified RIA value. See: Vanguard quantifies 'meaningful' value that financial advisors deliver 'beyond portfolio performance' in code shift 

It coincided with the establishment of Vanguard Advice & Wealth Management, a fee-based financial planning and full-service wealth-management unit headed by Joanna Rotenberg, the former chief of retail at Fidelity Investments. 

Done and dusted

It's all a consequence of Vanguard no longer being able to define value as better fees, says long-standing Vanguard expert Daniel Wiener in an email.

“The cost conversation is over – done and dusted,” the former founder and chair of RWA Wealth Partner explains.

“It’s an evolution of the company because, at least in one sense, they can’t market themselves as the low-cost leader anymore, and, besides, when you’re talking basis points, nobody really cares.

Vanguard “succeeded in driving the costs down across the industry, but now they’ve got to up their game and change the conversation. Goodman can probably do that,” Wiener says.

New narrative needed

July-appointed Vanguard CEO Salim Ramji keeps cutting costs, too, although not always with the blessing of industry analysts, who criticized the firm's Feb. 2 round of fee cuts for cutting through the meat into the bone, which knocked Vanguard's average fees down from seven basis points to six. See: Vanguard's latest vast fund fee slash puts its CEO on defensive.

In a very real sense, Goodman has also been hired to wrestle with the ghost of the legendary Bogle, who led the company for 25 years and passed away in 2019. See: Mission accomplished, Jack Bogle dies at 89 and it's still way too soon, but his legacy looms larger than ever.

Goodman is already on record respectfully mulling the conundrum of Bogle-ism in the modern investing age.

Bogle's “folksy nature and simple message were easy for some to dismiss … There were a few murmurs among the [Barron's] staff that he ‘always said the same thing,’ but that was what made him great. He never wavered in his message that investing should be easy, cheap, and, above all, safe,” Goodman explained, in a 2019 Op-Ed.

Yet, with the management fees of many of Vanguard's most popular funds already at record lows – and several large rivals, including Fidelity, Schwab, and BlackRock now heavily discounting their funds – Goodman, has to sell advisors a new narrative about Vanguard that focuses on more than just low fees.

Riding herd

"Goodman's hire speaks more to the leadership changes under Ramji than it does anything else …The new leadership is bringing Vanguard into the 21st-Century, after [it] lagged in so many areas such as communications and technology," says Wiener.

She is also “a seasoned journalist, and probably the best writer and thinker they now have on staff at Vanguard,” he adds.

She has to ride herd on the emerging narrative of Ramji's ‘new’ Vanguard, connect it to the firm's history, and spin it out into a single cohesive story, across multiple mediums, from print, to short-form video, television and snappy podcasts.

Pushing products

At TIAA – Goodman left the non-profit retirement shop after four years, in late March – she pushed for clearer language, journalistic story-driven prose, and easy to digest numbers.

As TIAA editor-in-chief, she successfully launched an in-house journal that focused on independent voices; a series of more technical reports for sophisticated retirement investors and she pushed the non-profit into using a simple “payout” number that showed prospective members how much extra they could earn in retirement income.

At Fidelity, where she spent two years revamping its content, particularly around workplace savings, 529 savings, and asset management, she understood RIAs' foremost mission – not to let clients outlive their money.

She oversaw the revamp of the firm’s digital presence, including the redesign of its webpage and an overhaul of all its educational content. And, she built out a team of freelancers and created a media system to ensure communication between the firm's disparate business lines.

Yet, Goodman's appointment also points to the fact that Vanguard has a lot of more actively managed and higher-margin products to push, particularly in fixed-income and alternative investments. Financial advisors tend to be the buyers of most of these products. See: After freemium-like beginnings, Vanguard Group is priming its $243-billion RIA as a profit engine with high-octane, higher risk, higher-margin proprietary funds, tempered by an 'opt-in' for investors

Blank slate

A holder of a certified financial planning qualification since 2022, and a graduate of Ithaca College, Goodman is also a Certified Finacial Planner.

“Throughout my career – as a journalist and in financial services – I've worked to help people better understand and engage with the forces that shape their financial lives," she says on LinkedIn.

"I became a CFP to do that even more directly,” she adds.

In some areas, she will even have a blank slate on which to stamp her imprint, Wiener and DeMaso agree.

“Part of the story here is that Vanguard – and the investment world at large – know how to communicate to investors in the accumulation phase -- ‘save more than spend, keep costs low, diversify and spend time in the market.' That story is well established,” DeMaso explains. 

But “talking to retirees or people spending down their accounts? That playbook hasn't been written yet,” he adds.

Goodman can have a major impact on Vanguard's fledgling alternative investments business, too, says Wiener, who labels himself an alts “cynic."

“There is a lot to still be said, and backed up with clear data on both performance and risks, [about] how alternatives either do or do not fit into a portfolio.”