Elliot M. Kass

Every client-facing industry has embraced social media with both arms -- except wealth management. Advisors and firms need to catch up.

From the courthouse to the wirehouse, Racquel Oden has blazed her own path. Now she's helping new advisors find theirs in her new role as head of Merrill Lynch's training program.

The number one Social Security strategy is maximizing both spouses’ benefits. Here are two ways to help clients do this.

One way to help clients avoid outliving their money is to encourage them to use a portion of their assets to purchase an ordinary, straight-ahead immediate annuity without any bells and whistles.

Funding long-term care is an increasingly important topic for planners to cover with clients, especially mass-affluent clients. "Even when you nail it down, the market changes on you and you have to re-evaluate," says advisor Bob Stowe.

Many partnership agreements cover what will happen if one of the partners dies, but fail to address the possibility of one of the principals becoming disabled.

Real estate is currently making a comeback, but do REITs make sense for mass-affluent clients?

Are clients, carried away with market returns of the last two years and tired of low rates, willing to take on more risk than they should?

Many clients don’t fully understand the coverage of their homeowners insurance policies and can use a qualified advisor’s help.

As opposed to more complex policies, such as universal life, which include more bells and whistles can also be more expensive, mass-affluent clients may want to keep it simple with whole life and term policies.

As is typical in periods when there’s the prospect of higher inflation, investment interest in collectibles is growing, and art prices in particular having been setting records. But do these represent safe vehicles for protecting your clients’ assets?

Breaking out of the traditional allocation model to include a much broader range of investment categories and using relative strength principals to reallocate frequently may be one way to achieve stronger results for clients.

Some academics maintain that if a client obtains an immediate annuity, it pays an income stream for life and the individual is less likely to outlive his or her money. But of course, many planners often see issues with this in real-life situations.

An annuity offers the investor income for life -- for a price. Considering the return on investment, how do annuities compare to bonds?

Recent studies have found that as people age, many lose their ability to make sound financial decisions. So what can be done to safeguard elderly clients’ hard earned assets?

Some planners have implemented online capabilities to serve an increasingly tech-hungry public. But how much tech is enough – and does too much get in the way of good planning?

What could cause the dollar to fall and inflation to rise? Planners should keep their eyes on three potential triggers.

Marital divorce is by definition an adversarial process, but from a financial standpoint it works out better for both parties if it’s also a cooperative one.

Essential elements of a risk-based plan include a thorough analysis of future cash flows combined with in-depth conversations regarding the client’s priorities and goals for a variety of scenarios including death, disability, long-term care, property losses and civil suits.

While the traditional way of gauging a client’s tolerance for risk is typically determined using a basic questionnaire, there’s another method that’s just as – if not more – reliable.