Ann Marsh

Shrinking margins in the independent broker-dealer space have prompted another independent broker-dealer, Seattle-based Pacific West Financial Group, to close its doors.

Planners aren't as enthusiastic as some of their clients about gold and silver.

Financial professionals, 86% of whom have at least one social media account, risk running afoul of compliance rules as regulatory bodies sort out the rules for advisors’ use of these new channels. That was the message from social medial expert Alexandra Basak Russell, at the Women Advisors Forum in Huntington Beach, Calif.

Merrill Lynch is helping its advisors and clients change their most basic assumptions about investing, according to Jennifer Williams, branch manager of the company’s Newport Beach, Calif., office told the audience at the Women Advisors Forum today in Huntington Beach, Calif.

Only 31% of financial advisors in the U.S. are women. Only 20% of women investors have a financial advisor, but 70% would like to work with a female planner. These numbers are even more impressive given that women possess at least half -- if not more -- of all private wealth in the country and control 80% of all household purchases.

A recent survey of 1,000 mass affluent investors uncovered a statistic that startled researchers: 75% of men said they wanted their spouse or partner to take more a more responsible role with their joint money.

Many planners don’t know a key neurobiological fact about a panicked client: namely, the client may not be able to process any advice until they calm down, Cynthia Harrington, a Los Angeles-based behavioral health consultant to the financial services industry, told a gathering of planners at the Women Advisors Forum in Huntington Beach, Calif.

Cetera Financial Group CEO Valerie Brown shares four lessons she said have had great impact on both her business and her life during the Women Advisors Forum in Huntington Beach, Calif.

It’s perhaps the ultimate irony when a financial advisor files for bankruptcy. But the CFP Board finds it is happening more and more often. Of 103 disciplinary hearings the board held last year, an estimated 25% of planners involved had filed for bankruptcy. In 2011, that number jumped to about a third.

The SEC has charged a prominent San Diego-based financial advisor with fraud, accusing him and his firm of failing to disclose to clients a conflict of interest in an investment and lying to and misleading clients about a hedge fund he manages.

In this low interest rate environment, some financial planners are advising their clients to cut the middleman out entirely with intra-family loans.

Anyone interested in investing in or doing business with Chinese companies should understand China’s fundamentally different corporate values, said Joshua Cooper Ramo, a keynote speaker at the Schwab Impact 2011 conference in San Francisco.

Many of the nearly 1.6 million nonprofits and charities in the country are in need of advisory services. With assets growing at 8.5%, this group represents a healthy market for advisors looking to grow their client base, according to Gary Price, managing principal at Fund Evaluation Group.

BlackRock managing director paints bleak economic picture but says corporate balance sheets are still solid.

Jerome Abernathy of Rydex SGI says alternative investment strategies will be increasingly critical for advisors who want to generate yield for their clients while also protecting them against systemic financial shocks.

Americans need a financial plan to turn them around. They’ve been consuming too much and saving too little for the better part of two decades, Bill Gross, Pimco’s co-founder and co-chief investment officer, told a rapt audience of financial planners at the opening of the Schwab Impact 2011 conference in San Francisco this week.

The SEC has ordered FINRA to improve the way it handles documents submitted during SEC inspections. The order, issued Thursday as part of an administrative settlement between the two organizations, comes after the disclosure that the director of FINRA’s Kansas City Office in 2008 ordered the minutes of three meetings dating back to 2006 and 2007 to be altered hours before they were they were provided to the SEC’s Chicago Regional Office.

The leading provider of software for 250,000 finance professionals, Emerging Information Systems, announced today that it expects to be acquired by Zywave, a provider of on-demand software for the insurance industry.

Get ready to connect with far-flung colleagues: The FPA’s much-awaited new social networking site is live and picking up speed. Several thousand members worldwide are already connecting online, forming groups and developing their own self-directed platforms within the 24,000 member-strong organization.

Wells Fargo’s Rich Lowrie helped craft the tax proposal that’s driving political debate.