Practice

Fidelity Investments is offering its Fidelity Personal Retirement Annuity on the platform of managed accounts provider FundQuest. Thus, the low-cost variable annuity will be available to investors through fee-based advisers, marking the first time Fidelity has worked with a turnkey asset management firm.

Two college-savings companies are borrowing a page from the consumer cash-back loyalty playbook, offering customers rebates on services including refinancing mortgages or opening online bank accounts. Futuretrust, a unit of Destination Maternity Corp., and Upromise Investments have partnered with a series of other financial services companies to offer rebates that can be swept into section 529 college-savings plans.

Thirty-eight percent of senior mangers around the world believe the economic crisis will end by the second quarter of next year, Atradius found in a survey of 3,500 executives in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia.

Mutual funds and large institutional investors are being spared from a new Securities and Exchange Commission proposal to reign in the growing use of dark pools to hide trading information, since only trades smaller than $200,000 would be exposed.

At an educational seminar for the asset management industry that law firm Walkers is hosting on Dec. 2 in New York, the focus will be on the key issues facing the industry, restoring investor confidence being the most important one.

Lincoln Financial Group has launched the Lincoln MYGuarantee Plus single premium deferred fixed annuity. It is available for qualified plans (IRA and Roth IRA) through partner firms and the Lincoln financial network.

OppenheimerFunds decided to settle a lawsuit filed by the state of Oregon over its 529 plan for $20 million, payable to 45,000 investors in the plan early next year.

Three days after saying it would delay the effective date to permit 401(k) plan administrators to offer investment advice, the Department of Labor decided to scrap the rule altogether. The third extension for the effective date would have been May 17, 2010.

In an unusual move for a large corporation regarding lawsuits claiming excessive 401(k) fees, construction equipment manufacturer Caterpillar decided to repay $16.5 million to 80,000 former and current plan participants. The company also agreed to replace retail mutual funds in the plan with lower-cost institutional funds and hire an independent consultant to review the plan for the next two years.

Despite the financial services industry's downsizing, New York Life Investments is building up a sales force to target the defined contribution market.