Practice management

401K GPS has launched it personalized 401(k) monitoring service, to ensure participants’ strategies fit their risk profile. While the service monitors portfolios on a daily basis, it issues quarterly recommendations on how investors should reallocate their holdings, based on retirement goals and market expectations. Should volatility in the markets become pronounced, 401K GPS will issue intra-quarterly alerts.

In a union that would create one of the largest CPA and business advisory firms in California, Top 100 Firm Burr Pilger Mayer is merging with Windes & McClaughry Accountancy Corp., effective Jan. 1, 2012.

Krawcheck is out, Darnell is in.

Calculating the worth of your practice requires placing a value on different types of capital.

A significant number of advisors who serve 401(k) plans will ramp up their retirement income planning practices over the next few years, according to a new report from Principal Financial, called the “2011 Best Practices in Retirement Income Planning Study.”

CBOE Stock Exchange said it agreed to acquire the National Stock Exchange, an all-electronic stock exchange now based in Jersey City, N.J.

A Long Island-based investment advisor repeatedly lied to investors to conceal the fact that his PIPE investment and trading strategy was failing during the financial crisis and stole more than $1 million in client assets to buy personal luxury items including a Lexus, a Mercedes and a Rolex watch, according to the SEC.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority has hit Raymond James & Associates and Raymond James Financial Services Inc. with an order to pay $1.69 million in restitution to more than 15,500 customers who were charged unfair commissions.

Data theft and misuse by employees has plagued Wall Street firms for years. Here’s what to do to protect yourself from threats inside your organization.

Financial Planning senior editor Donna Mitchell says financial advisors are particularly skilled at helping their clients define how their financial lives are -- and should be -- structured. If only they were able to do the same for their practices.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged a San Francisco-area investment advisor with fraud for allegedly lying to clients about how brokerage commission rebates were being used and then providing phony documents to cover up the so-called “soft-dollars” scam during an SEC examination.

Merrill Lynch said it rolled out an enhanced set of algorithmic trading tools that allow market participants to tune settings on strategies down to each order that is to be executed.

New York Life Retirement Plan Services has reorganized into four industry-focused service teams serving: Taft-Hartley, technology, finance and professional services, and manufacturing, materials and retail. Each of these teams will have its own relationship managers, communications consultants, investment specialists and ERISA consultants.

The twin needs for organic growth and expense reduction are driving insurance technology investment, new research from IVANS, Inc. indicates.

Now that the Department of Labor is back at the drawing board trying to determine what should constitute a fiduciary under 1975 ERISA amendments, the industry wants to make at least one point clear: investors should have good choices, regardless of the business model their advisors use.

The advocacy organization representing independent broker-dealers and independent financial advisors will press its policy priorities to lawmakers on Capitol Hill as part of a two-day summit in the nation's capital.

Advisor Software, a provider of wealth management applications for financial advisors, announced that its goalGetter financial planning application for the iPad is now available for free download from Apple’s App Store.

Wall Street firms shouldn't think about complying with the Internal Revenue Service's new rules requiring them to calculate the cost of investors' accounts only as a burdensome operational cost. Instead, they should think of following the new cost-basis reporting rules as a potentially profitable means of retaining and attracing new clients, says a report just issued by research firm Celent.

Eighty-four percent of 401(k) sponsors surveyed by Mercer and the U.S. SIF Foundation (formerly known as the Social Investment Forum Foundation) believe that sustainable and socially responsible investing (SRI) funds will either hold steady or grow in the next five years.

Investors who relied on professional help in the form of target-date funds, managed accounts and advice earned nearly three percentage points more than those that did not, according to an analysis of eight large defined contribution plans between 2006 and 2010 by Aon Hewitt and Financial Engines. The plans covered 400,000 participants with $25 billion in assets.