Financial planning

The Securities and Exchange Commission would like to hear from advisors. That was the resounding message of a speech delivered Tuesday by Norm Champ, the director of the SEC's Division of Investment Management, the unit of the commission that oversees federally registered investment advisors.

When the Department of Labor produces its controversial proposal to extend fiduciary responsibilities to certain advisors to retirement plans later this year, the plan will come with a robust economic analysis making the case for new regulations, along with targeted exemptions to the rules, the senior official who is leading the effort said on Tuesday.

In May, stock and bond mutual funds, including exchange-traded funds attracted $56 billion of net inflows bringing total net intake for the first five months to about $350 billion, according to data from Strategic Insight.

For a majority of financial advisors, life insurance planning isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

More than 60% of high-net-worth clients expressed a high degree of trust in both their wealth managers and their firms, according the World Wealth Report 2013, but a majority prefer to work with a single firm to “manage all of their financial needs."

You’ve set up a Twitter account and you know how to tweet, but how can you convert Twitter followers into prospects and then clients? Marie Swift, the Marketing Maven offers tips for Twitter power users.

As Congress looks to raise revenue by eliminating tax exemptions, could 529s, which cost the government nearly $2 billion a year in lost revenue, be on the chopping block?

While liquid alternative assets grew double-digits last year within the wirehouse segment, the asset class has also seemingly hit a wall.

Within the past month, a number of mutual fund shops have embarked on branding campaigns.

The National Advisors Trust of South Dakota will give National Advisors-affiliated RIAs and their clients access to some of the most flexible trust and tax statutes in the nation.

In a keynote address kicking off the Insured Retirement Institute's Government, Legal and Regulatory conference, Atkins, now the CEO of Patomak Global Partners, offered a round critique of the Dodd-Frank Act and the myriad rulemaking proceedings that it set in motion.

Less than a week after landing another Morgan Stanley advisor, Raymond James has lured a Midwestern group with over $240 million in assets under management from Morgan Stanley to its independent-broker dealer.

A total of 36 firms managed to increase their revenue last year. Check out the firms that moved the needle in 2012.

Now is a good time to buy contemporary art, even though prices have never been higher, the Dallas-based collector Howard Rachofsky says as he digests his bratwurst.

Sessions at the 25th annual Morningstar Investment Conference covered a range of topics from actively managed ETFs, closed-end funds and alternatives to strategies to boost retirement income and solutions to the “yield conundrum.” Here is a baker's dozen of the smartest things we heard at the conference.

The U.S. exchange-traded funds market is primed to double up on its current $1.5 trillion in assets to the tune of more than $3.5 trillion in assets over the next five years, according to iShares’ latest forecast.

Advisors may soon see lower fees for liquid alternative asset funds – hedge fund mutual funds – thanks to the push by hedge fund managers to market these plans more aggressively into the defined contribution space, according to panelists at last week's 25th annual Morningstar Investment Conference.

Scottrade emerged as the top-rated firm in J.D. Power & Associates 2013 U.S. Self-Directed Investor Satisfaction Study, but overall investor satisfaction with self-directed firms declined from last year.

The amount of money investors have withdrawn from municipal bond mutual funds, at $1.61 billion for the week of June 12, continues to climb and break records for the year.

Ron O’Hanley, Fidelity Investment’s president of asset management and corporate services, laid out his take on a number of economic trends through a game of red light/green light led by Morningstar’s head of global research Scott Burns.