RIAs

The American College has redesigned its Chartered Financial Consultant designation coursework to add a focus on real-world client issues like divorce, LGBT families, retirement income and behavioral finance.

Comprehensive planning is catching on with advisors -- and their clients. But it can be labor intensive, requiring that a practice add more resources and staff.

Many independent advisors say they consider themselves fiduciaries, even if they aren’t legally obligated to adhere to that standard of care. So why are so many opposed to the DoL's expected proposal?

While equity market performance has helped, RIA firms are also demonstrating smarter company strategy, a recent Charles Schwab study finds.

Roughly three in four advisors said they were likely to seek out additional support, content or tools related to Social Security in the next year.

Morgan Stanley has lost a team that generated $3 million in annual revenue to Steward Partners Global Advisory, boosting the eight-month old independent firm's total recruited assets to more than $1 billion.

The deal with newly launched Global Retirement Partners is a "great opportunity to add scale," says LPL exec Bill Morrissey.

As part of the FP50, Financial Planning tracks the percentage of reps producing more than $150,000. Many of the firms with the greatest number of top producers, it turns out, are smaller boutique firms.

The high-profile hiring of David Bach creates a revved-up marketing engine for Edelman Financial, which already has $13 billion in AUM. Can other firms use the same technique?

Triad believes it can attract advisors who are "more entrepreneurial" with its hybrid model.