Practice

The California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the largest public pension fund in the U.S. with approximately $260 billion in assets, has made a few changes to its investment fund lineup for the system’s Supplemental Income Plans (SIP).

Assets in defined contribution plans flowed to target-date and international equity funds in 2012, according to a new tracking tool launched by the Defined Contribution Solutions group at Northern Trust.

The first decade of the 21st Century dramatically changed the landscape for financial advisors.

Assets in defined contribution plans flowed to target-date and international equity funds in 2012, according to a new tracking tool launched by the Defined Contribution Solutions group at Northern Trust.

DCIO sponsors take heed.

When advisors are asked to describe their compensation on the FPA website, they can choose to check one of four options: fee-only, commission-only, a combination of fee and commission, or salary. But as one prominent advisor recently learned, those options are dangerously limited, given the industry’s often complex business models -- and the answers that planners select can contain minefields for the advisors, their firms and their clients.

Driven by difficult market conditions and higher levels of anxiety among investors, the question of whether or not advisors are "stealing" client has been coming up more frequently in the past few years. The overall growth rate for advisory practices has been stagnant for a decade, which is pushing sales management to scrutinize who is growing and why.

PIMCO is teaming up retirement technology platform providers Aria Retirement Solutions and insurer Transamerica Advisors Life Insurance Company to market retirement income products to asset-based fee-only Registered Investment Advisors.

Communicating what you can do for prospective clients is much more effective if you talk about what changes they want to see rather than what activities you will do for them.

Seven financial advisors had their right to use the Certified Financial Planning certification marks permanently revoked in March as part of a series of public disciplinary actions announced by the CFP Board this week.