The 2012 Academy of Financial Services Annual Meeting will be held in San Antonio, TX on October 1st & 2nd, to coincide with the FPA Annual Conference. This year is the 26th anniversary of the Academy of Financial Services, which gathers to share innovations in teaching and research that will benefit the practice and body of knowledge of financial planning and financial services.
For those of you who have never attended an AFS meeting, it feels like a two-day, rapid-fire, brain-busting smorgasbord of financial planning content.
One or more of the authors or co-authors of each of almost 90 academic research papers has 20 minutes to present an abstract of their latest unpublished/yet to be published papers. Papers are grouped into themes or categories like Investments, Portfolio Management, Investor Behaviour, Estate Planning, Retirement, and so on. After the paper is presented there is a brief period for discussion and questions, usually with an eye to help the author of the research fine-tune his or her concepts for publication or point out gaps.
The vast majority of participants are from Universities from the USA and Canada but like the FPA itself, the gathering attracts professors from Europe, Asia and around the globe. This will be my fourth year presenting at the AFS (yes, even non-academics like me can participate) and each year I have been exposed to some great new thinking in the field of financial planning.
If you are like me, FPA San Antonio will itself be “consuming” with too many things to do and people to see in too short a time. None-the-less, I believe that fundamental, academic research is critical in the evolution of the profession. If you have some time on Monday or Tuesday, you may want to check this out.
The AFS will be held at the Menger Hotel, which is less than a 10-minute walk from the FPA Conference.
See http://www.academyfinancial.org/ for more information.