Law and regulation

Last year, global asset managers experienced their highest operating margins since 2007, according to a new survey by consultant Casey Quirk and research shop McLagan.

A new FINRA rule aims to make information on brokers’ disciplinary actions more available and searchable.

FINRA has censured Securities America and fined it $100,000 for making inaccurate and misleading statements to clients via emails.

“It's a pretty big issue for us,” said Daniel Sibears, FINRA executive vice president for member regulation. “There are many dozens of complaints where there's been [a] compromise of customer information, particularly information that is needed to get into online accounts and to execute transactions and move money.”

FINRA's social media spot check notification last week shouldn't come as a terrible surprise to the industry. The announcement underscores the need for firms to thoughtfully develop clear policies to supervise and manage usage, content and engagement.

T. Rowe Price Group has added former U.S. Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME) to its board of directors.

Franklin Buys Remaining Stake in Alt Shop

Thirty eight percent of fund firms across the country said that they will increase technology-related costs while a total of 17% of respondents said they expected no change in whether their firm's technology costs would rise or decline for the rest of 2013, according to the 2013 Money Management Executive Technology Survey.

Two U.S. Senate aides nominated to join the Securities and Exchange Commission will get a confirmation hearing before the Senate Banking Committee on June 27, according to a Senate announcement today.

When advisors are asked to describe their compensation on the FPA website, they can choose to check one of four options: fee-only, commission-only, a combination of fee and commission, or salary. But as one prominent advisor recently learned, those options are dangerously limited, given the industry’s often complex business models -- and the answers that planners select can contain minefields for the advisors, their firms and their clients.

Seven financial advisors had their right to use the Certified Financial Planning certification marks permanently revoked in March as part of a series of public disciplinary actions announced by the CFP Board this week.

"The bottom-line is to protect investors from advisors who may not have their best interest,” says Jack Waymire, the founder of Paladin Research and Registry. “We’re providing them the process to find out about the advisors they’re thinking of hiring – with a focus on certification, ethics, business practices, and services provided.”

Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke said Wednesday that regulators are making steady progress on a number of critical rules under the Dodd-Frank Act, predicting that several final rules will be released in the coming months.

The House Financial Services Committee on Wednesday approved a slew of bills that would slow the pace of regulatory proceedings to expand advisors' fiduciary responsibilities and relax registration requirements, among other measures.

With FINRA clearly stating its social media guidelines, the question many advisors are asking themselves is this: what do I do now? Luckily, there are three simple steps to avoiding regulatory fines and keeping your advisors actively online.

A targeted examination letter probes firms for detailed information on their social media use as the regulator grows more serious about enforcement.

The mutual-fund industry, in what may be the last round of lobbying against tighter rules for money-market funds, rejected a scaled-back proposal to force only the riskiest funds to give up their stable $1 share price.

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 the first case of a state taking on bank consultants, New York regulators have banned Deloitte Financial Advisory Services from financial consulting for one year.