Practice

Tapping Elizabeth Warren as a top administration official charged with setting up the new consumer protection bureau will help her avoid a tough confirmation battle, but may offer as many risks as rewards.

While most advisors selling 401(k)s did the dirty work themselves a decade ago, the majority now farms out admin to specialist firms.

While fiduciary rules, 12-b-1 changes and new ADV reporting requirements are on everyone’s radars, most advisors aren’t doing much to prepare.

UBS Wealth Management Americas recruits David Hatz and Thomas Zur to its Aventura, Fla., office.

Putnam will join USAA, Columbia Management, Vanguard and Upromise, who also run 529 plans through Nevada. Columbia also manages an advisor-sold plan.

According to a survey, just 25% of plan participants who performed a rollover of $200,000 or more since the middle of 2008 rolled all or some of the assets into an account held by their existing plan provider.

At a Senate Banking Committee hearing, supporters of the plan argued that covered bonds are an untapped channel that could supply additional liquidity to the sluggish mortgage markets.

The lack of appointments to key jobs created by Dodd-Frank makes you wonder what the administration is thinking, and more specifically how much power Geithner is amassing.

Industry participants say brokers have made a lot of progress toward meeting new cost-basis reporting requirements from the Internal Revenue Service, which take effect in January 2011.

At 91%, the overwhelming majority of retail investors support a fiduciary standard for all financial advisers, according to a survey of 1,319 investors by Infogroup/ORC.