Practice management

Younger planners have a lot to offer the industry but can face numerous hurdles to success, according to Joseph D. Pitzl, director of financial planning at Intelligent Financial Strategies in Edina, Minn.

A perfect storm combination of eroding social security trust funds, high unemployment and a flood of Baby Boomers all hitting retirement age at the same time will put enormous strain on the system for the next two decades and result force retirees and their advisors to come up with alternative retirement income plans and strategies to make ends meet.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority has fined Kane, McKenna Capital Inc. and Wulff, Hansen & Co. a total of $27,500 for municipal transaction disclosure and trade rule violations.

The FDIC on Monday announced it hired Bret Edwards as the director of its division of resolutions and receiverships. Edwards has been acting director since January.

The new searchable system adds another layer of transparency into the brokerage and financial advisory industry, on a firm and individual level.

Nine Tips to help you build relationships using new media and good old fashioned communicationma

Shawn Liebel and Kevin Forney join Morgan Stanley from UBS, while Robert Coloret and Mark Delmar join from Ameriprise.

Although when investors are surveyed almost all say they are satisfied with their advisors, the reality is that loyalty to an advisor is different than satisfaction, said Matt Oechsli of The Oechsli Institute at the IMCA annual conference in Las Vegas on Monday.

The federal budget deficit is estimated to skyrocket to $1.6 trillion this year, but Andrew H. Friedman of The Washington Update told a standing-room only crowd at IMCA’s annual conference in Las Vegas that there are still opportunities for investors.

Financial advisors looking for new high ultra net worth investors should set their sights on Asian countries like China, India and Taiwan that are home to a groundswell of super-rich entrepreneurs in need of sound financial advice.

In a recent filing, State Street, the Boston, Mass.-based institutional investor services firm, revealed that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and other federal authorities have inquired about its past foreign exchange practices.

New rules targeting broker-dealers could mean new exams for certain management professionals and new standards for SEC inquiries.

A group of Democratic members of the House, led by Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) and Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ), has written to the Department of Labor criticizing a new rule that would redefine the term fiduciary in the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974.

The TNS Investor Confidence Index declines to 113 in April.

A two-hour Senate Banking Committee hearing Thursday touched on virtually every major financial services topic under the sun but resolved little.

New research by Novantas LLC, Forrester Research and others adds weight to an idea being kicked around in the industry: that mobile may have its limits as a way to entice tech-savvy customers, reduce branch use and cut costs.

The time and energy that the advisor focuses on the client produces far more terminal wealth for that client than anything you can get from the traditional investment management services.

The key is turning that overriding motivation into actual results in the real world.

The previous minimum was $3,000 for eleven of the twelve funds in the series.

In the last 18 to 24 months these proudcts have become increasingly available to the mass affluent because of a reduction in costs and an increase in efficiency, said AJ Harper, managing director of Lockwood Advisors, an affiliate of Pershing, in an interview at the Money Management Institute annual conference.