Practice management

The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association is proposing a new “execution-with-diligence” standard for municipal trading that would require a dealer to use “reasonable diligence” to determine the market for a bond so the price it provides to a customer is “fair and reasonable under prevailing market conditions.”

The group targeted companies that processed financial transactions and retailers that received and transmitted financial data.

Learning about the thinking patterns that you employ whenever you encounter difficult or challenging events is the first step in making life-altering changes in your thinking. Here are five examples of distorted thinking habits that advisors commonly face.

Advisors in all channels saw fee income increase as a percentage of their compensation over the past year, according to a new study.

Former UBS AG executive Peter Ghavami was sentenced to 18 months in prison for rigging what should have been competitive bids to handle municipal-bond investment deals.

With minimal impact on current tax rates and the potential for tax-free withdrawals as they age, Roth 401(k) plans are catching on with the young and not-at-all-wealthy.

Often advisors don't have the time to motivate, hold accountable, and help junior advisors with their time management and goals. Here are the biggest struggles junior advisors face and the things these associates wish they could tell their bosses.

Deciding which tasks to outsource can be difficult for advisors. Dave Grant identifies projects that have turned out to be great candidates for a handoff.

Specific rules govern how a 401(k) beneficiary designation is changed, and an advisor’s failure to help a client comply fully could send his or her hard-earned money to unintended recipients.

Ameriprise Financial has hired three financial advisors from UBS, Raymond James Morgan Keegan, and HSBC.

Ex-UBS AG Managing Director Peter Ghavami and two former colleagues convicted of rigging municipal bond investment deals may be sentenced to less prison time than the government is seeking, a federal judge said.

The Securities and Exchange Commission charged Trendon Shavers with defrauding investors of nearly $150,000 worth of bitcoins through Bitcoin Savings and Trust, an online investment scheme he ran, and of making false claims while soliciting investments online in 2011 and 2012.

Your clients need help understanding and gaining insight into what makes it so hard to set financial limits with their children before they can curtail or slow down this behavior. Questions aimed at the underlying motivations are much more effective than showing them scary charts and graphs.

Robert Khuzami, the former head of enforcement at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, is joining Kirkland & Ellis LLP.

Increased demand for due diligence on hedge funds -- if not for the funds themselves -- may be the initial impact of the SEC's recent ruling lifting an 80-year-old ban on advertising for private offerings.

Lots of multi-millionaire clients don’t consider themselves wealthy. Here’s why.

Two key factors come into play in order to improve your advisor website’s SEO: off-page SEO and on-page SEO. Off-page SEO refers to optimization strategies outside of your website’s design. The biggest element in off-page SEO is getting other quality websites to link back to your site. On page SEO consists of strategically placing your most important keywords within the content elements of your actual pages.

SIFMA's staged cyberattack Thursday was declared a success (at least by SIFMA). But experts say banks still need to put more defenses in place to protect their infrastructures.

Cambridge Investment Research founder Eric Schwartz has put together a highly structured several-year plan aimed at sharing company ownership and allowing it to remain independent. Here are the main pillars of the plan.

We’re officially half-way through 2013. And, for anyone who isn’t yet to the midpoint of reaching their 2013 goals, this can be a hard pill to swallow.