Practice management

In a presentation given by Beverly Flaxington, president of advisors trusted Advisor, at the 15th annual TD Ameritrade Institutional annual conference, advisors learned how to focus their business (and their resource) to improve their effectiveness.

“Something has gone very wrong in Washington,” said Tom Giachetti of Stark & Stark Attorneys at Law. “You cannot catch criminals through more regulation. Investment advisors will be burdened with more costs and it’s not protecting the investing public. This is a knee jerk reaction to Bernie Madoff.”

Many investors are assuming that that headache of cost-basis calculations are no longer their problem, period, said Nico Willis, chief executive of NetWorth Services, Inc., a financial software company in Phoenix. What most don’t realize is that the requirement doesn’t apply to securities bought before Jan. 1.

The $10 million is part of a settlement announced Thursday with the SEC, which charged the company with "failing to reasonably supervise its registered representatives" when the Reserve Yield Plus Fund saw the value of its shares fall below $1 in the midst of the credit crisis erupting at the time.

A lot of advisors seem to confuse their value proposition--and it hurts them in the long run.

Stephen Campbell joins Citi Private Bank after serving as chief investment officer at Zefram LLC, the personal investment company of Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos.

Nearly 875,000 employees increased their 401k contributions in 2010, a 21% increase over 2009’s level of 721,000 employees, according to Merrill report.

According to a new study, for many women, retirement means living single and that requires more preparation, and more advisor aid.

And 27% have no personal savings, a Harris Poll shows.

International regulators worked hard, agreed in December to impose tough standards and then gave bankers eight years to meet them. But the reality is something much less concrete.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission both say they lack the resources to implement the responsibilities thrust upon them by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act. Here are the numbers. You judge how they stack up.

Firms have been tracking the adjusted cost basis of the equities and mutual funds bought and sold by investors for years. The challenge now is how best to capture this data and accurately report it to the IRS and investors.

The Securities and Exchange Commission Wednesday said it would start the process of setting rules for how security-based swap execution facilities will operate and how registration of such facilities will work.

The data is available through the Fidelity clearing unit’s online workstation.

If only the administration's task in fixing housing finance was as easy as choosing plan A or plan B. Instead, part of the Treasury Department's challenge is just sifting through all the ideas.

Now that the SEC has thrown down the gauntlet on reform of the securities industry, what can independent broker-dealers and advisors expect to happen next? A lot of studies. And more rules.

During a session at the FSI Broker-Dealer conference, a panel of marketing experts and one self-effacingly "clueless" independent broker-dealer executive weighed in on the challenge of motivating advisors to grow their client base, manage compliance issues and install meaningful continuity and succession plans without neglecting their existing roster of clients.

What makes a $1 billion regional firm tick? In the case of Modera Wealth Management, stick to the legacy firms’ philosophies.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has approved an all-public panel option for FINRA arbitrations. But that could result in more costs for all sides to pay for expert witnesses, one expert said.

Experienced investors talk at the Financial Services Institute annual conference about lessons hard learned in financial crises, their distrust of large firms and the value of establishing a personal relationship with their advisor.