Practice

The Investment Management Consultants Association announced that the cumulative pass rate for its CIMA qualification exam was 63% and the for the CIMA certification exam was 58%.

There seems to be a lot of "energy" (and sometimes anger) around the idea that some people provide full-service financial planning and some people call themselves planners while actually selling products or managing assets for a living.

Private fund advisors with more than $1 billion in assets under supervision have a greater need for monitoring, especially after lessons learned during the recent financial crisis, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission. So the commission proposed requiring all registered investment advisors that work with one or more private funds to complete a new document, the Form PF. Registered investment advisors who work with hedge and private equity funds, among others, would be required to file the new form periodically.

While Americans have remain committed to saving for retirement through their 401(k)s, a significant portion of households owning financial investments, 37%, have become more conservative in their saving, asset allocation and choice of retirement age, according to a survey of 3,000 households at the end of 2010 by the Investment Company Institute.

Commodity Futures Trading Commission member Bart Chilton told insittutional investors Wednesday that opponents of changes wrought by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act are trying to block implementation of resulting rules by starving regulators of funding.

The U.K.’s Financial Services Authority fined the firm $1.77 million on Wednesday, bringing its total fines against the firm this month to $13.97 million.

Companies are not following the leads of consumers. In the enterprise, Apple’s iPad tablets and iPhone smartphones are gaining ground against mobile devices based on Google’s Android operating system. And the biggest adopters of iPads and iPhones are financial services firms, according to a new activation report.

As the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act approaches its one-year anniversary, the focus on the law is shifting from the issues of extending coverage and insurance reforms to the structure of the upcoming insurance exchanges, accountable care organizations and the definition of "essential benefits."

The absence of banking issues from the State of the Union speech was logical two years after the crisis, but the President's silence on areas still in turmoil disappointed lawmakers.

The Spectrem Affluent Investor Confidence Index rose five points in January.