Practice management

TV personality and personal finance journalist Carmen Wong Ulrich considered many options over the past year and a half as she explored the possibility of opening up her own financial planning firm. After getting an inside look at multiple different planning practices, she decided she wanted to build something new and different, and that she was drawn to “the power of being in an all-female shop.”

Standard Retirement Services is launching two enhanced retirement plan websites to provide advisors, plan sponsors and participants with a "more informative and intuitive online experience."

Here’s an interactive slide show that delves into five of the most common problems – and some solutions – facing clients who are already retired.

Marketing expert Marie Swift says advisors need to be proactive and creative to keep their reservoirs of new business from drying up.

Financial services firms admitted that they invited negative public perception by their actions, or inactions, according to the 2012 Makovsky Wall Street Reputation Study.

Former SunAmerica executive Frank Hayn will support existing retirement plan business and will help NPH representatives grow their practices in the retirement plan and 401(k) space.

The costs of fraud include direct monetary loss, fines from regulators and lost potential customers. Then social media amplify the hit to a firm's reputation, according to Progress Software's deputy CTO.

Cyber crime has become the second most common type of economic crime being experienced by financial services firms, after asset ‘misappropriation,’’ according to a survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers.

In order to make better financial decisions, investors need simple, easy-to-understand disclosures written in plain English and provided before they hire a planner, the CFP Board recommended to the SEC.

A typical fee-based advisor undercharges clients by about $20,000 each year, according to a presentation on the PriceMetrix site.

BATS Global Markets chief executive Joe Ratterman told customers and members of its exchanges that last week's "failure to perform as expected has no excuses.”

Running a planning practice takes you into a lot of chicken-and-egg situations, such as needing to have scale before you can get the tools you need to grow. Bob Veres has answers for RIAs starting out or struggling to grow their firms.

The founder of Veritable, the country’s third-largest RIA, says his firm’s new partnership with wealth management giant Affiliated Managers Group is part of a broader effort to build a business that can last for generations.

The SEC is focusing on computer-driven exchanges, including BATS Global Markets, as platforms for high-frequency trading firms to gain an unfair advantage over other investors.

Caribou Coffee Company, Inc. has selected Indianapolis-based McCready and Keene, an actuarial and retirement benefits consulting firm, as the exclusive service provider for its 401(k) plan, which currently has 6,000 employees and more than $7.5 million in assets, which transferred on March 1.

The more than 1,300 registered representatives and financial advisors at Ameritas Investment will now be able to breathe easy as they tweet.

Not knowing how to save for retirement is a problem that affects Americans at all income levels, including the highest, according to a new study.

Here is the three-part playbook to consult, as advisors and brokers get serious about communicating through social media.

A series of victories by Morgan Keegan & Co. is calling into question who can be considered a "customer" in securities arbitration cases.

A series of victories by Morgan Keegan & Co. is calling into question who can be considered a "customer" in securities arbitration cases.