Practice management

The St. Louis brokerage company continues to its slow-but-steady growth with new addition in Connecticut.

This comes shortly after seven other FA’s joined MSSB.

A Florida retiree who gave her Wachovia broker a second chance "to do a better job" with her IRA investments has filed claim against Wells Fargo after suffering losses, again.

Curian Capital found that 62% of advisors say that improving efficiency and overall time management is a major goal for the coming year.

Just as the market volatility of the last few years has been challenging for investors, it’s also been challenging for advisors. In addition to the higher level of effort required to keep nervous and frustrated clients on the books, high volatility in client accounts makes it harder to be confident of fee-based revenue and therefore confident of a practice’s overall financial health.

A report released by Pershing suggests that while most wirehouses and independent broker-dealers recognize that their core advisors are aging and will soon need to be replaced, few have done much in the past three years to address the problem.

Facebook and Twitter are becoming increasingly important to wealth managers and their clients, but a new survey released by Advisors Trusted Advisor makes it clear that old-fashioned word of mouth is still the most powerful marketing tool for financial advisors and their firms.

Five "psychographic" categories can help to give advisers a handle on their clients and potential clients, but they can also provide some reassurance to baby boomers

Funding consideration were part of the reason that the SEC decided to shift oversight of smaller advisors to states. With soaring deficits, how will the states handle the added responsibility of supervising financial advisors?

Senior ranking brokerage operations and operational risk executives beware: the Securities and Exchange Commission says the buck now stops with you when it comes to proving you have sound procedures in place.

Four bank failures book-ended the country on Friday. Collectively, they had a total of $1.05 billion in assets and are expected to cost the Deposit Insurance Fund $267.6 million.

Of the 75 technology companies represented at the T3 Conference, Smarsh and Arkovi are among the companies offering tools to help advisors be active in the space.

Succession planning in a financial advisory firm is vital to long- term success and growth, according to Richard C. Salmen, a certified financial planner and senior vice president and senior advisor of GTrust Financial Partners in Overland Park, Kan.

Some advisors at Bank of America Merrill Lynch's U.S. Trust unit this week received an ultimatum from on high, demanding they sign a new agreement that would effectively sideline them for up to eight months if and when they decide to leave the firm or else risk losing not only their 2010 bonuses but their jobs, too.

The regulator said the companies had failed to adequately safeguard non-public customer information.

James Shorris is set to return to the private sector in April after more than seven years in enforcement leadership roles at the organization.

Whose needs come first?

“What worked 5 years ago, doesn’t work today,” Peter Montoya told a packed room at Thursday’s T3 conference in Florida.

Marie Swift, the president and CEO of Impact Communications, presented to a room of advisors at the T3 Conference in Florida on how they can maximize their online presence by effectively using social media.

When it comes to web marketing, independent advisors are different from everyone else. Which means there is a good chance you have been getting bad advice. Bad advice about using the web to grow your practice.