Practice management

She said, he said. A pair of financial planning organizations are dueling over designations.

Your website is, first and foremost, about you and your services. That is why you ought to be the star of it. And the best way to do that is through high-quality video footage. Why? Because video persuades in a way that text copy can never do.

The horserace politics of the run-up to the November presidential election may be the order of the day, but just around the corner in Washington lurk what promise to be contentious debates over fiscal issues of major significance for financial advisors and their clients.

After founding his own financial planning practice in 1983, Thomas Morrison has rolled up his firm, Morrison Financial Services, this year and joined St. Louis-based Benjamin F. Edwards as vice president-investments.

Securities America has hired Denise Morrison as its new chief compliance officer.

The former CFO and Treasurer of Legg Mason's fixed income funds has been barred from the securities industry for altering books and records of one of the funds.

Three former Morgan Stanley Smith Barney advisors have taken their business to Stifel Nicolaus to start an office in Madison, Connecticut.

With a new head of research on board, Lipper announced a new set of initiatives for the second half of 2012 that involves building out research and analytical tools.

As the Republican convention kicks into high gear this week, don't expect the headliners to spend much time discussing the Dodd-Frank Act, much less its specific parts.

More than 75% feel confident they will have enough money to live comfortably in retirement, even though nearly 40% of Baby Boomers and about two-thirds of Gen Xers have less than $100,000 in retirement savings.

One of the most important things any advisor can do to for his or her clients is to help them understand what underperformance really means, according to Steve Atkinson, "The Advisors' Coach."

TD Ameritrade survey finds that 60 percent of Generation X and Generation Y make regular, automatic contributions to their retirement savings compared to just 46% of non-retired baby boomers.

SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro may have lost the first round in her push to reform the $2.6 billion money market mutual fund industry, but the fight has only just begun.

GoldenTree Asset Management LP, a money manager overseeing $15.9 billion in assets, hired Daniel Ornstein from Morgan Stanley to co-head its trading business.

Janney Montgomery Scott continues to flex its recruitment muscles, drawing another high producing team from wirehouse competitor UBS.

Noelle Maloney, who was second in command of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's troubled internal watchdog office, has left the agency.

"We have many advisor who are choosing to build their practices around women," says Joan Khoury, LPL's chief marketing officer. "When they do this, we are empowering them to have all this turnkey info for their women investors."

Authenticity is a critical component of being a successful financial advisor. Unfortunately, not all advisors fit that description, according to Steve Sanduski, "The Prosperous Advisor."

Plan participants who pick their own mix of investment options are generally exposed to greater risk due to reduced diversification, according to The Principal.

ICI President and CEO Paul Schott Stevens said the "exhaustive record" before the SEC did not support the changes that it was proposing.