Practice management

Mutual funds have a new competitor in the defined contribution market: collective investment trusts. These investments have been around for years but are now increasingly grabbing the attention of investors in defined contribution retirement plans.

TD Ameritrade this week will roll out an upgrade of its open architecture platform’s integration with cloud-based electronic signature system DocuSign, as it streamlines DocuSign’s pairing with financial form-filling software Laser App.

BATS Europe said it has resolved the “hardware issue” that shut off all trading on Tuesday.

BNY Mellon Wealth Management has appointed financial services veteran Ron Bruder managing director of a growing team of advisors to ultra high-net-worth families and family offices.

Microsoft Outlook moved down to second place — overtaken by Redtail — in the CRM software category for advisors this year. It was the first time in the history of Financial Planning’s annual tech survey that Outlook was not in first place.

BATS Europe is confronting “system issues.” The pan-European trading venue operated by BATS Global Markets went down at 9:36 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time.

If it looks too good to be true, it is. That appears to be the stance that will be taken by the SEC when it comes to investigating the fraudulent activities of hedge fund advisors as evidenced by its recent enforcement action against three separate firms and six individuals.

Financial Planning columnist Bob Veres says advisors need to understand what could happen if FINRA becomes their regulator.

Tablets have fundamentally changed the way financial advisors do their work and there’s every reason to believe they will continue to be the dominant tool of choice in the advisory community for years to come.

Ahead of the Department of Labor’s anticipated proposal to redefine fiduciary responsibility, expected sometime in 2012, 55 House Republicans sent a letter asking for more careful consideration of the effects on consumer choice before any new rule is proposed.

Neuberger Berman has placed Fayad Abbasi, an analyst at the center of a federal insider-trading probe, on paid leave.

Since the financial crisis and Great Recession, 401(k) plans have undergone dramatic shifts. To foster diversification and greater participation, 51% of participants in Fidelity Investments' 401(k) plans are in automatically enrolled plans, up from 16% five years ago, and 73% of the plans use target-date funds as the default, up from 11% in 2006.

From Dodd-Frank to new taxes on professional services, lawmakers are increasingly making and suggesting changes that could dramatically impact planners and their clients. The planning community hasn't sat idle amid all this rule-making. In fact, the Financial Planning Association and its regional chapters have gotten more politically active than they've been in the past.

Marketing expert Marie Swift says creating perceptions in the listener’s mind is an important marketing aspect for financial advisors. A good “elevator speech” is a succinct way to tell your story and distinguish you from others. It's also a way to qualify potential clients and to generate referrals, with an oft-overlooked bonus: confidence.

Fidelity Charitable has rolled out GivingCentral, an online advisor platform, and a dedicated advisor service team.

Thomson Reuters said it would begin providing custom charting of pricing data on key financial markets on two of its information services.

For financial advisors, the introduction of iPad over the past year has changed everything. Notoriously resistant to new technologies, advisers have become envious of the remarkable advancements taking place in the consumer tech market.

A Dallas district court upheld a $1.7 million FINRA arbitration panel’s penalty against Raymond James Financial Services over how a former independent contractor handled the finances of an elderly Texas man and the estate of his deceased wife.

Lincoln Financial Group has launched a new, $20 million advertising campaign created by Gyro of New York.

Fraud is on the rise in the United States and globally, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers’s 2011 Global Economic Crime Survey, with cyber crime making the most significant increase in the two years since the firm’s last survey.