Financial planning

Here are this year’s best bank-based financial advisors and the secrets to their success.

With the holidays fast approaching, Deutsche Bank Wealth Management has come up with a holiday wish list for its "true love,” the financial markets. For the most part, the Deutsche Bank crew doesn’t believe they’re dreaming and predicts most of these wishes will come true 2012. Do you? Here’s an interactive slideshow counting down the 12 wishes they and most wealth managers are hoping for in the New Year.

2011 is winding to a close and financial planners and their clients are already making adjustments to their portfolios and plotting the strategies they intend to deploy to increase their wealth and buffer their retirement savings. To this end, the Financial Planning Association of San Francisco has offered up its Top 12 Financial Planning Strategies for 2012. Take a gander at this interactive slideshow detailing the best tactics for you and your clients next year.

Your clients can have homeowners' insurance that monitors for leaks or fires - and even file claims on their behalf.

The average price tag for a data breach now is $7.2 million. How are you supposed to value the loss when your crown jewels – trading algorithms – get put on data sticks or uploaded to remote servers, as happened to Goldman Sachs? Or you have to face down billions in verified losses, because you couldn’t control “unauthorized trading,” as occurred to UBS? And if you're a financial advisor or smaller advisory firm, how do you safeguard data while also taking advantage of social media and mobile devices to service your clients? The National Security Agency has begun providing Wall Street banks with intelligence on foreign hackers, a sign that financial sabotage from abroad is imminent, if not already in progress, in the estimation of Booz Allen Hamilton. Here are the Top 10 Financial Services Cyber Security Trends to act on in 2012 and recommendations on what to do about them, from senior vice president Bill Wansley.

Most people never do the type of research required to get into the right career in the first place. So we’re here to help with a package of articles to help you determine your own profile.

The Best. The Brightest. And the Secrets of Their Success.

The Best. The Brightest. And the Secrets of Their Success.

On Wall Street identified the most prolific asset managers under 40, and these five came out on top for the regional firms.

It seems more and more common lately that when you turn on the T.V. or open your Internet browser there is breaking news of some sort of disaster. From direct financial disasters such as market volatilities to weather related disasters like floods, tornados and fires, to even more large-scale disasters like earthquakes, tsunamis and nuclear crisis; disasters are unavoidable. But how prepared are you to deal with a major disaster, or other unexpected events that can trigger change? Here are 10 steps that should help you and your firm build a disaster recovery plan so you can be prepared should the unimaginable arise:

Asset management firms recorded average profitability of 28% through 2010 and the first half of 2011, according to a new McKinsey report, and independent asset managers will control two-thirds of all assets under management by 2015. Here are five business imperatives successful wealth management firms will need to heed over the next three years:

Every recognized profession has its top colleges. Medical and law schools in the U.S. date back to the 18th century. As a much more recent profession, financial planning has spent much of the last four decades developing its own system of education and professional certification. As many of the current crop of planners near retirement, they don't have to look too far to figure out where the next generation will come from. The answer is in all the schools. Not only has the number of programs been on the rise - up 15% since the past year and a half, according to the CFP Board - but enrollment in the programs themselves has generally been increasing, too. With so many CFP Board-registered programs out there, Financial Planning focused on 10 worthy institutions. We talked to veteran planners and industry leaders to get a sense of which 10 programs belonged in an overview. Our list is not a ranking. Like this survey itself, the information we've gathered is just a starting point. Think of it as Financial Planning Education 101, an introduction.

Krawcheck calls for more diverse perspectives -- not necessarily based on gender or race -- and talks about the importance of appealing to younger investors put off by the struggling economy and Wall Street scandals.

Advisors of the future are gravitating toward financial planning programs. Here are the schools on many students' short lists.

Here are five of the most common scams that advisors and their clients either managed to avoid or fell victim to this year.

Advisors and their investor clients should be on the lookout for these popular scams. According to the North American Securities Administrators Association, here are five of the most common scams that advisors and their clients either managed to avoid or fell victim to this year.

As the parent company announces earnings, the Americas unit sees more net new money and higher FA productivity.

What is the difference between elite practices and other firms? One hint: Seminars are not what they used to be. Cetera Financial Group found out that it’s really more about a firm’s overall approach to marketing. The El Segundo, Calif.-based broker-dealer recently partnered with The Oechsli Institute to survey 352 financial professionals, including elites, in the report “Marketing Tactics of Elite Advisors”. Here are seven marketing tips that will boost your firm’s profile and assets under management.

In our second annual Influencer Awards, Financial Planning honors six advisors whose innovative ideas and wide-reaching work are forging new paths for the planning industry. When the editors of Financial Planning sat down to decide which nominees deserved to win in each category in the magazine's second annual Influencer Awards, we found we had far too many worthy contenders. That was only natural: The financial planning community has consistently turned out smart individuals who strive to bring their best to clients and the profession as a whole. Here’s a look at this year’s honorees:

Celebrities and athletes need tailored estate planning to minimize the risks of being in the spotlight.