Financial planning

The division, created in 2001 and made up of affiliated RIA firms who custody their assets with Raymond James, now includes about 100 firms, approximately 250 advisors, and more than $8 billion in assets.

The need for advisors to tackle succession planning decisions now has garnered increasing attention and discussion in recent years. Yet, even as advisors tend to recognize the importance of taking action to prepare, many still have not gotten started.

The Senate Banking Committee will meet Thursday to vote on whether to recommend the Senate confirm two nominees to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Kenneth R. Lench, the chief of the structured and new products unit at the SEC’s division of enforcement, is leaving at the end of the month.

Wealth management is “significantly behind” other industries in adopting emerging mobile technology to interact with clients, according to Darrin Courtney, research director for Boston-based CEB TowerGroup. How can advisors change this trend?

USAA Investments has added two new mutual funds to its lineup.

Pimco’s Bill Gross added to holdings of Treasuries in his flagship fund in June while betting incorrectly on gains in U.S. inflation- indexed securities during the first half of the year.

Bond funds netted redemptions of $59 billion (excluding exchange-traded funds) last month, according to Strategic Insight.

Here’s a sampling of bank reps who were recently promoted or moved to new organizations to assume roles of greater responsibility.

To help financial services firms adhere to corporate and regulatory standards when it comes to social media communciations, Actiance unveiled review and approval capabilities to its Socialite social-media management program.

Global retail and retirement assets under management are set to cross the $70.4 trillion mark by the end of 2013, an increase of $20 trillion from 2008, according to new findings from Cerulli Associates.

Can women trust you to be their advisor?

U.S. fixed-income mutual funds attracted investor deposits last week, rebounding from redemptions spurred by speculation that the Federal Reserve would scale back its unprecedented stimulus, while bond exchange-traded funds had withdrawals.

Over the past decade, firms offering clients their own investment products increasingly lost ground to those recommending an open architecture array of investment options from outside managers, but there has been a recent resurgence in proprietary management among wealth managers.

A majority of asset managers said the Federal Reserve’s recent decision to slow the pace of its bond buys will lead to higher interest rates in the next three months, according to a quarterly survey of investment managers by Northern Trust.

Mutual fund liquidations have risen within the first six months of 2013 compared to the same period last year.

Municipal bond fund outflows for the week of July 10 rose to $1.2 billion from $870 million the prior week.

Raymond James lured six advisors with over $350 million in client assets to its independent channel, the company announced Thursday.

Professional athletes are enticing prospects for advisors. They've made it big, encountered a sudden windfall of wealth and many are young- sometimes right out of high school- and do not have the experience to understand how to manage it all themselves. Unfortunately, those conditions have also made for some of the most contentious disputes.

REITs “have been one of, if not the biggest contributors” to the underperformance and volatility in mortgage bonds, said Bryan Whalen, co-head of mortgage bonds at Los Angeles-based TCW Group Inc., which oversees about $131 billion of assets.