Practice management

Lincoln Financial Group unveiled Lincoln InStep, an educational program for retirement plan participants designed to raise advisors awareness of products, services and strategies to help defined benefit contributors maximize their retirement savings investments.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority fined Chicago-based Nuveen Investments $3 million for creating and distributing misleading brochures to promote the sale of auction rate preferred securities.

They plan to boost their staff by 30% over the next 12 months, Fidelity finds.

Two big-bank executives said that unless Congress delays Dodd-Frank's cap on debit interchange fees, they are ready with options for new consumer and merchant fees.

In the May issue of Financial Planning magazine, I discussed how client perceptions may have changed over the past three years. I use the term Client 2.0 to describe this more-cautious and aware buyer, and offered thoughts on how you can better connect using an evolved Client Communications 2.0 plan. I spoke with several smart, accomplished advisors and industry consultants such as Ed Jacobson, Steve Saenz, Carol Anderson and Amy Mullen to hear their comments.…

While Congress, the SEC and individual states continue to work out the precise definition of a fiduciary and precisely what his or her requirements will be going forward, RIAs and other financial services professionals still need to take it upon themselves to implement best practices that will ensure they'll be in compliance whenever these new regulations are finalized.

While a religious group was predicting the imminent Apocalypse last week, a set of financial services industry representatives were warning of the possible end to their own world.

The firm should have been more on the ball, from a supervisory standpoint, the claimants’ attorney said.

According to the 12th Annual survey from the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies released on Tuesday, a substantial number of Americans are unprepared for retirement and many do not have a backup plan if they are forced into retirement earlier than planned.

The vast majority of American employees are still under financial strain, even when the study looked at the least vulnerable demographic groups—men, those between ages 55 and 64, and workers who earned between $150,000 and $199,999 a year.

Allianz Global Investors white paper authored by UCLA professor Shlomo Benartzi is offering several tools drawn from the field of behavioral finance to help advisers help their clients.

The unit of Bank of America Private Wealth Management said Wednesday that it hired Greg Khost as a managing director and regional executive in Florham Park, N.J., Donald R. Quattrucci, as a managing director and market investment executive in Rhode Island, and Nancy E. Anderson, as a senior vice president and private client advisor in Minneapolis.

I've put on my annual to-do list that sometime this year I'll create a Facebook page, and Lord help me, I may even start twittering before long. This means I'm about to stick my toe into the dreaded Social Media world.

If financial advisors really want to increase the likelihood that their clients will commit to and execute on the retirement savings plans they've devised, they should ask less questions, use lots of simple visual aids and talk to them like eight-year-old children.

Corporate cultures will ultimately define how far social media tools go in helping banks and financial services firms deliver services to customers.

Financial institutions should be aware of what investors are posting about their firms to sites like Twitter.

Bank of America has hired Morgan Stanley's chief information officer of enterprise infrastructure, David Reilly, away to be CTO of B of A's Global Wealth and Investment Management team.

Frank LaRosa, a senior vice president and office manager at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney’s Philadelphia branch has been terminated, a firm spokesman confirms.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority has proposed that broker-dealers disclose any revenue-splitting arrangements they have with mutual funds at the time they sell their shares to investors.

Among other things, the rules are expected to keep executives or employees of credit rating agencies from going to work for the companies whose credit they have rated, for at least one year. The proposals are also likely to block agencies from having a person who markets its products or services also participate in its ratings.