Financial planning

How can advisors be more productive and take more time off? According to Jimmy Williams of Regier, Carr & Monroe in McAlester, OK and Randy Thurman of Investment Advisors Inc., by focusing on a dozen simple steps, the big picture becomes simpler.

Demographic shifts, technology implementation and investing challenges were in the spotlight this week in San Diego, where about 3,000 advisors and other industry professionals came together for TD Ameritrade Institutional’s annual conference. Between the presentations, meetings and hallway conversations, Financial Planning heard lots of smart takeaways for advisors.

Take the money and run? It is a question advisors face as retirees get offered lump-sum bonanzas.

Lack of knowledge is the top reason for not using alternative investments followed by lack of track record, according to Cambridge, Mass.-based consulting firm Cogent Research. As popular of an investing tool as they have become, there are different theories about what role alternatives play in a portfolio as well as what actually constitutes an “alternative,” so it’s easy to understand why there could by some misunderstandings.

Here we present a new look at our Top 50 Bank Advisors list, reshuffled and ranked by percentage increase in annual production (and then we cut it down to just the top 20).

What makes an online trader successful? Fidelity Investments surveyed its top trading customers, those with a 12-month portfolio performance of at least 20%, to find out the secrets to their investing success.

Institutional investors' investment philosophy is changing with the times. The products they're asking for are becoming more and more in-line with larger social and macro-economic trends, according to a report from Boston-based consulting firm Cerulli Associates and the Institutional Investor Institute.

These often-reclusive businesses manage the finances of America’s affluent and occasionally complete with banks for clients and employees. These offices have interesting back stories.

If you want to keep them on track, forget nitty-gritty details and focus on these six major themes.

Change is the name of the game in 2013. A new report from Aite Group looks at the major trends that could dominate the wealth management industry this year.

As the RIA industry grows and reshapes itself, advisors need to keep an eye on the shifting competitive landscape. In our annual RIA Leaders report, in addition to identifying the top 50 firms by AUM and by growth, Financial Planning ran the numbers to find 50 emerging fee-only RIA firms to watch.

You can use a well-organized advisory board to get strategic advice from the people who are your most valuable assets. Here are a few suggestions for running a group.

Though many advisors say that they want to boost client satisfaction, most don’t know how to make it happen. By taking the right steps to keep your clients highly satisfied, you will be able to position your practice for stronger growth.

So much research comes out this time of year with many major firms cautiously offering their predictions for the new year that we wondered how they would stack up on the major issues. We’ve parsed through some of the larger reports from Barclays, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, UBS, ING and Wells Fargo to track the top themes and condense it down. Here are some of their more interesting recommendations on global themes as well as some more local, unique investment ideas that they had to offer.

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

Here we present a new look at our Top 50 Bank Advisors list, reshuffled and ranked by AUM (and then we cut it down to just the top 20).

The RIA sector drastically outpaced the growth rate of the rest of the financial services industry in the past year, growing at 13% versus 1.3%, according to research from Cerulli & Associates. For our annual RIA Leaders report, Financial Planning ran the numbers to look at the 50 fastest-growing fee-only RIA firms for 2012.

Who is poised to influence the financial advisory industry this year? Check out who made the list, in alphabetical order, and who will set the agenda on everything from the next generation of advisors to the latest set of regulatory rules.

Two questions lie at the heart of the rapidly evolving registered investment advisory space: Which of the country's 15,016 RIA firms can legitimately call themselves independent? And what, precisely, does independence mean anyway? Here are Financial Planning's top 50 fee-only RIA firms for 2012.

For a price, new data-mining services offer access to stunningly detailed personal information on clients and prospects.