Practice management

Small business owners offer a great opportunity to build a loyal customer base, but there are some potential drawbacks and challenges advisors need to overcome.

Each social media site has its own culture. Every advisors needs to learn how to exist in them or risk getting lost in the crowd.

Kasina has unveiled a new research report looking at how asset management and insurance firms are currently using mobile technologies to interact with their wholesalers and advisors.

Advising entrepreneurial clients is rarely easy work for planners, especially when it comes to dealing with warring members of a family owned business.

They’re earning more income than ever before, outlive their husbands by an average of four years and are significantly more inclined to seek out financial advice, but the advisory community still hasn’t done enough to cash in on this enormous wealth management opportunity.

Advisors need to focus on building an enduring business, said Mark Tibergien, the CEO of Pershing Advisor Solutions at the 2012 Pershing Insite Conference.

In testimony before the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, the Fed chairman also highlights lawmakers' role in strengthening U.S. economy.

As the debate over regulatory reforms in the RIA sector has resurfaced on Capitol Hill, industry groups on both sides of the issue are making their case to lawmakers and staffers in the hopes of either advancing or derailing legislation that would establish a self-regulatory organization to oversee RIAs.

Wells Fargo has snapped up new advisor hires with more than $1.99 billion in assets under management in its Private Client Group, bank branch-based Wealth Brokerage Services and independent Financial Network in the past several weeks.

Scott & Stringfellow named Bryan Cram president of its private client group. Cram he plans both internal and external expansion of the retail business.

They’re skeptical, cynical and probably way too dependent on mobile computing devices. But advisors who don’t make the effort now to target and cater to Generation X and Generation Y investors will pay a steep price in the next decade as their bread-and-butter Baby Boomer clients transition from wealth accumulators to wealth distributors.

Advisors who want to position themselves for growth should set their sights on the next generation of investors who are poised to inherit unprecedented wealth.

In testimony before members of a House committee on Wednesday, Richard Ketchum, the chairman and CEO of FINRA, offered an enthusiastic endorsement of a legislative proposal to establish a self-regulatory organization to oversee RIAs.

“It’s who, what, why, where, when and how much,” says Nick Niemann, an Omaha, Neb., attorney wo has worked with hundreds of financial planners and their entrepreneurial clients.

At UBS Global Asset Management, the push to outsource all middle office operations, from portfolio tracking to fund accounting to performance reporting to general administration proved to be a "daunting task."

The 2012 John Hancock Trust Survey found that 84% of investors surveyd strongly trust their financial advisor, while primary doctors were “strongly trusted” by 79% of those surveyed and accountants by 74%.

Investors of all ages and incomes want more online services and features in order to be more informed and involved in their investment activities. And if they don’t get them from their financial advisors, they’ll find someone – if they haven’t already – who will.

"I would first like to fully fund the SEC," Barney Frank (D-Mass.), the ranking member of the Financial Services Committee, said at a hearing this morning considering the Bachus bill. "The very fact that we're considering an SRO argues strongly against the inadequate funding this Congress has given the SEC."

The Milwaukee-based company hired Brian Rauscher as a chief portfolio strategiest to run the new group

Fidelity has introduced the “Realizing the Value in Your Firm” program, which includes a series of workshops being conducted nationally to help advisors understand succession planning options.