Practice

A perfect storm of eroding Social Security trust funds, high unemployment and a flood of Baby Boomers all hitting retirement age at the same time will put enormous strain on Social Security for the next two decades, forcing retirees and their advisers to come up with alternative retirement income plans and strategies to make ends meet.

While a religious group was predicting the imminent Apocalypse last week, a set of financial services industry representatives were warning of the possible end to their own world.

A Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) arbitration panel awarded $1.7 million to a Texas man and the estate of his deceased wife, after finding that a former independent contractor at Raymond James Financial Services improperly managed their portfolio using life insurance and variable annuities.

More workers are delaying retirement, according to The Conference Board.

The firm should have been more on the ball, from a supervisory standpoint, the claimants’ attorney said.

According to the 12th Annual survey from the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies released on Tuesday, a substantial number of Americans are unprepared for retirement and many do not have a backup plan if they are forced into retirement earlier than planned.

The vast majority of American employees are still under financial strain, even when the study looked at the least vulnerable demographic groups—men, those between ages 55 and 64, and workers who earned between $150,000 and $199,999 a year.

Allianz Global Investors white paper authored by UCLA professor Shlomo Benartzi is offering several tools drawn from the field of behavioral finance to help advisers help their clients.

The unit of Bank of America Private Wealth Management said Wednesday that it hired Greg Khost as a managing director and regional executive in Florham Park, N.J., Donald R. Quattrucci, as a managing director and market investment executive in Rhode Island, and Nancy E. Anderson, as a senior vice president and private client advisor in Minneapolis.

I've put on my annual to-do list that sometime this year I'll create a Facebook page, and Lord help me, I may even start twittering before long. This means I'm about to stick my toe into the dreaded Social Media world.