Practice management

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.

"Customers will go along with price increases if they think they are getting a fair value for the service," says Jens Baumgarten of Simon-Kucher & Partners.

Turbulent times demand tough action.

The repeal of the 3% withholding tax might actually make life easier for financial planners and their clients.

FINRA and the SEC issued a joint risk alert and regulatory notice Wednesday, advising broker-dealers to make sure they’re mindful of what’s going on within their branch offices and even offering some tips to ensure they remain in compliance.

Broadridge Financial Solutions has linked its fixed income processing platform in Canada to the country’s central securities depository through a new module called ClearancePro.

More than half of Fidelity's 11.7 million 401(k) participants are in plans that have automatic enrollment, up significantly from 16% five years ago. Furthermore, 73% of the plans Fidelity administers default their participants into lifecycle funds up from 11% in 2006.

Some 60 UBS Wealth Management Americas financial advisors will kickoff a three-month test drive this week of an iPad application designed to make it easier to interact with clients and access research reports — all in the hope of generating more assets under management.

The average price tag for a data breach now is $7.2 million. How are you supposed to value the loss when your crown jewels – trading algorithms – get put on data sticks or uploaded to remote servers, as happened to Goldman Sachs? And if you're a financial advisor or smaller advisory firm, how do you safeguard data while also taking advantage of social media and mobile devices to service your clients? Here's what you need to know and do to protect your firm and your clients.

Three-quarters of small business owners believe that so many Americans are financially unprepared for retirement that the problem has reached the level of a crisis, but only about a fifth of them actually offer their employees a 401(k) or similar plan, according to a new survey.

FINRA has sanctioned eight firms and 10 individuals for selling interests in private placement offerings “without having a reasonable basis for recommending the securities,” the regulatory agency said in a statement. The sanctions included ordering more than $3.2 million in total restitution.