Practice

U.S. households held $10.7 trillion in retirement assets at the end of 2010, Hearts & Wallets said, culling information from the Federal Reserve Flow of Funds and U.S. Census data. This is just above the previous high of $10.5 trillion reached in 2007, and a big climb from the $2.4 trillion loss in retirement assets in the crash of 2008, when these assets fell to $8.1 trillion.

Prudential has just released preliminary survey results indicating that when shopping for retirement plans, consumers between the ages of 18 and 36 are more interested than those over age 45 in guaranteed income features. The company is leveraging these results with additional features, including security, to certain plans offered by Prudential Retirement.

Financial planners across the globe are just as aware of the potential repercussions that Dodd-Frank Act implementation and other regulatory issues will have on the profession as their U.S. counterparts, the head of the Financial Planning Standards Board said during a media briefing Monday morning.

The Department of Labor issued new regulations that aim to broaden access to personalized investment advice for workers engaged in retirement savings plans.

About a week ago, Prudential released preliminary survey results indicating that when shopping for retirement plans, consumers between the ages of 18 and 36 were more interested than those over age 45 in guaranteed income features. The company is leveraging these results with additional features, including security, to certain plans offered by Prudential Retirement.

Morgan Stanley Smith Barney has defined tweets as “static content” it is widely watch pilot test of Twitter and Linked In involving 600 of its 18,000 financial advisors. Here's a look at what you and your firm need to know to drive a successful social media plan.

The SEC is now requiring alternative investment fund managers to provide a lot more details on their operations.

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.

Vanguard has filed with the SEC to offer the Vanguard Target 2060 Retirement Fund for those currently 18 to 20 years old, and early next year will merge the Vanguard Target Retirement 2005 Fund and the Vanguard Target Retirement Income Fund, as their allocations have become nearly identical.

Investors contributed $748 million to Fidelity Charitable, the largest donor-advised fund in the U.S., in the first nine months of 2011, a 23% increase from the first three quarters of 2010. Thus, the fund is on course to receive the largest amount of contributions in its 20-year history, Fidelity said.