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Asset managers have come a long way since the financial crisis to earn back a significant amount of the revenue and earnings lost since the fourth quarter of 2007.

Advisor confidence in the economy and the stock market improved in March as a majority of advisors said they think unemployment has finally steadied.

State Street Global Markets’ Investor Confidence Index of 108.0 is up 5.4 points from February’s revised reading of 102.6.

Fidelity’s institutional service organization’s first big initiative is new tools and service upgrades for National Financial broker/dealers to reduce their administrative tasks and help them focus on clients. Fidelity developed the tools after discovering that brokers spend nearly one-third of their time on admin tasks.

In an opinion piece in today’s Wall Street Journal, Charles R. Schwab, chairman of Charles Schwab Corp., spells out the grave danger that the near-zero fed funds rate poses for senior citizens. With their purchasing power effectively eviscerated by 76%, retirees are “financially starving,” Schwab says.

Victory Capital Management, the asset management arm of KeyCorp's KeyBank, says it is positioned to quickly expand the assets it manages in collective investment trusts, or CITs, for defined contribution plans, but the effort will not lack challenges.

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected the Jones v. Harris Associates excessive mutual fund fee case Tuesday, essentially vacating the Chicago federal appeals court’s rejection of the case on the basis that such cases can only be heard when they involve fraud. The Supreme Court has asked the lower court to reconsider the case.

ING plans to launch a registered indexed annuity called Select Multi-Index next month and is voluntarily registering it with the Securities and Exchange Commission in anticipation of Rule 151A.

Financial Research Corp. has selected NewRiver’s FundPOINT Data for 529 plans to provide better analysis for investors and advisers, including information on fees, commissions, breakpoints, tax advantages and open architecture.

With investors more prone to invest in alternatives in the wake of the financial crisis, they might want to consider commodities, according to an article written by three university professors and the managing director of the CFA institute in the upcoming issue of Journal of Investing.

The number of managed accounts in rep-as-adviser programs increased 29% from 2007 through year-end 2009, but because advisers are required to contact clients every time a change is made to these non-discretionary portfolios, managed accounts are inefficient, Cerulli says.

Along with turnkey asset management programs, which allow advisers to outsource functions such as manager research, portfolio construction and performance reporting in order to gain operational and cost efficiencies, unified managed accounts are gaining popularity.

McCarthy Heads Citi ETF Investor Services Team

T. Rowe Price was named the Best Overall Fund Group for large companies at the 2010 U.S. Lipper Fund Awards ceremony held March 24 in New York.

A new investment firm is promising to shake up the way Americans invest by providing individuals with direct access to institutionally priced mutual funds and other investments.

Fidelity Investments expects sales of its 401(k)s to continue to increase through third-party financial advisers to small and midsized companies-and the company plans to reduce fees to gain additional share. In August, Fidelity plans to switch its Advisor 401(k) platform to a system where the adviser receives a flat fee from Fidelity instead of several different fees in the form of 12b-1 fees.

Charles Schwab filed arguments in federal court in San Francisco to try to preclude the Securities and Exchange Commission from suing it over its YieldPlus fund. Once one of the biggest short-term bond funds in the world, with $13.5 billion at its peak in 2007, YieldPlus lost 35%, before dividends, in 2008 due to high exposure to mortgage-backed securities, which comprised nearly 50% of its portfolio. Today, a mere shell of its former self, it stands at $184 million.

Recovery to Exceed Expectations: Barclays

Thanks to their robust disclosure policies, mutual fund companies are generally well-protected against investor lawsuits, but that won't stop lawyers from trying anyway.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is concerned that some mutual funds and actively managed and leveraged ETFs, in particular, may be investing too heavily in swaps and derivatives. If the staff determines that the investments are inconsistent with the leverage, concentration and diversification provisions of the Investment Company Act, it will cease granting exemptions going forward. Funds that already received exemptions would not be impacted, the SEC said.