Dave Lindorff

New study finds banks -- large and small -- need to do a better job of implementing the technology and processes necessary to curtail money laundering activity in order to avoid the stiff fines already levied on their peers.

Even after an embarrassing online porn scandal rocked the regulatory agency last year, a new report from SEC Inspector General David Kotz finds some staffers are still going to great lengths to access these racy sites on company time.

Financial advisors and their clients could be bucking some serious macroeconomic headwinds through the rest of 2011 as consumer confidence continues to erode, unemployment remains high and housing prices deteriorate.

Annuity products, both fixed and variable, had a good run in the bank channel during the first quarter of 2011.

New rules will make it possible for financial fraud tipsters to pocket a bounty of up to 30% of any recovery or sanctions of more than $1 million and provides new protections from employers.

Variable annuities sales in 2011 climbed significantly in early 2011, continuing a trend begun last year, and reversing a slide that saw them fall from a high of $184 billion in 2007 to a low of $128 billion in 2009.

A group of Democratic members of the House, led by Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) and Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ), has written to the Department of Labor criticizing a new rule that would redefine the term fiduciary in the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974.

Atlantic Trust seems to have discovered a money management model that works.

How is a financial advisor supposed to go through the array of annuity products on offer and find the best ones for each client’s investment and retirement needs, especially when many of the products on offer are changing almost every year?

Worries about the future of Social Security and of Medicare, as well as the experience of the last market crash and the housing slump, have left an increasing number of Americans worried about whether they will have adequate resources to provide for their retirement years, and are making them more open to financial advice.

In Japan, where origami, the folding of paper into intricate animals and other shapes, is a national hobby, it is believed that someone who folds 1000 origami cranes will have her or his wish granted.

According to the FINRA survey, in addition to these worries, fewer than half of current retirees said they were working with a financial professional to handle their retirement assets. Only one in five reported having a written plan for retirement.

As Boomers start moving into retirement, a huge pool of money is “in motion,” reports a study by Pershing LLC, and those financial advisors who manage to “capture the retirement relationship” with investment clients stand to gain 50% more of those clients’ wallets.

Investors continue to pour more more money into ETFs, even as they shift their focus away from riskier Emerging Markets and into more conservative bond ETFs. That’s the news from State Street Global Advisors, which just released its latest Snapshot report tracking ETF funds.

Bankrate.com said there is a surprising amount of interest among investors in liquid CDs, step-up CDs, and bump-up CDs.

It may be too late to capture the sector's rebound, but these real estate vehicles still offer an uncorrelated combination of income and appreciation.