Practice management

House Financial Services Committee chairman Spencer Bachus, R-Ala., is warning the Securities and Exchange Commission that he does not support its proposed rules for a municipal advisor registration system because they are too broad and do not reflect congressional intent.

UBS Wealth Management hired Alexander S. Friedman as chief investment officer, while also filling out his team with former White House staff staffer Mona Sutphen and alternative investment manager Mark Haefele.

Pahnke and his team, the Pahnke Wealth Management Group, join from Robert W. Baird.

The tool lets retail investors see how their portfolio is performing against benchmarks and how much risk they have taken.

Independent financial advisors say that improving efficiency and time management is a goal for 2011, and carriers can help them achieve it.

A new survey of high-net-worth investors with more than $2 million in investable assets found that most expect to at least triple their net worth in the next decade, a sure sign that the affluent expect the market's recent momentum to continue for the foreseeable future.

To help financial advisors and firms jumpstart their social media endeavors without running afoul of FINRA regulations, LIMRA and social middleware firm Socialware this week rolled out "Insight: Advisor Series," a new social media training program specifically designed to help guide them through the potential legal and cultural landmines presented by social networking sites and platforms.

Only 10% of Americans with $5 million to $25 million in investable assets described themselves as “very wealthy” in a recent survey by the Spectrem Group.

In the past 11 years, we’ve had two major bear markets and experienced the near collapse of the world financial system. Not surprisingly, many advisors lost revenue, lost clients and some even lost confidence in their ability to protect their clients’ assets during times of turmoil. Yet during this 11-year period of global upheaval, a select group of advisors prospered.

In an effort to prevent a recurrence of past abuses by broker's brokers, the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board has issued a new draft rule that details what they must do to comply with pricing, fair-dealing, and transaction rules.

UBS has hired Louise F. Gunderson as a new managing director of investments for its midtown New York office.

It seems we have reached the absolute bottom of the barrel in terms of regulatory efficiency. If the SEC is spending weeks on trivial issues and completely missing Bernie Madoff then it is clear that something is seriously broken.

In the past year, TD Ameritrade’s mobile trading has increased by 125%.

A MassMutual Retirement study found that women put their retirement assets in target-date options twice as often as risk-based options in the fourth quarter of 2010, while men were just as likely to use a target-date fund as they were a risk-based one.

Advisor-owned firm HighTower has expanded its advisor force with the addition of four Merrill Lynch veterans in Portland, Maine.

After years of absorbing one punishing body blow after another as the market continued its free fall, affluent investors are finally starting to regain their confidence and invest accordingly, according to a new survey from Spectrem Group

More than half say they’ll buy stocks in 2011

Customer relationship management is more than just an industry buzzword. In fact, for advisors it can be the difference between a profitable business and a really profitable business.

How you assess the banking industry's health from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.'s latest earnings report may depend on which page you turn to.

Dodd-Frank contains a series of ambitious deadlines requiring regulators to complete 170 or so new rules by July. But it's become clear the agencies are going to miss many targets.