Financial planning

Broker-dealers charged billions of dollars in excessive markups on municipal bond trades from 2005 to 2013, according to a new study.

Advisors who don't prepare their firms for demographic changes, regulatory uncertainty, and succession planning are setting themselves, and their firms, up for failuae.

Most planners do a lot more than select investments. So how do you measure the value of providing financial planning?

John Hancock Financial Network is picking up another 280 registered representatives?with the acquisition of Symetra Investment Services.

In a business where scale is everything, regional broker-dealers are growing rapidly. Check out which firms have the most advisors, and which are gaining ground.

Timid clients and more fee-based business weighed on transaction revenues. See which firms fared best over the past year.

Fidelity Institutional Wealth Services introduced a platform that it hopes will make mergers and acquisitions easier for registered investments advisors.

Payout is top-of-mind for most independent advisors. Which firms had the largest growth in payout? According to Financial Planning's analysis, here are the top 10 firms.

As financial planning becomes a more important element of advisors' practice, fee revenues are ticking up across the board. Click through to see which firms are capitalizing the most on this movement.

In 2012, 36% of all participants in Vanguard retirement plans invested their assets in a professionally managed investment option, more than double that did so in 2007.

ETF flows topped $17 billion in May with the large cap category leading the way taking in $5.4 billion in flows, according to State Street Global Advisors’ latest ETF Shapshot.

Financial Planning unveiled its annual list of the largest broker-dealers in June. Here are the top 10 by total revenues.

Which broker-dealers have the best fee-based mix? The results were surprising and highlight a different group of firms.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has improved how it justifies new regulations after at least five recent court defeats faulted its use of economic analysis, according to an audit by the agency’s inspector general.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has paid $580,000 to settle claims by a former internal watchdog that he was fired in an effort to quash his investigations.

Shares of discount brokers are gaining the most since 2003 compared with the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, a sign that small investors are joining the four-year bull market even after U.S. stocks suffered their biggest losses in six months.

For the second consecutive week, equity exchange-traded funds experienced net outflows, handing back some $2.8 billion, while conventional mutual fund took in $500 million.

Investors pulled more money from municipal bond mutual funds than they have all year as funds that report flows weekly recorded outflows of $1.47 billion for the week ending June 5.

Commonwealth Financial Network, the nation’s largest privately held independent broker-dealer, named Rich Hunter president and chief operating officer on Friday and also announced new affiliation models for its nearly 1,500 financial advisors.

SpringReef Partners, a consulting firm specializing in evaluating wealth mangers for high and ultrahigh net-worth clients, has been acquired by Aronson, an accounting and consulting firm based in Rockville, Md.