Practice management

So you've met a great prospect or received a great introduction. What's next? Bill Cates offers dos (and don'ts) for what to say when you call your new prospects.

Rocco Carriero, an Ameriprise Financial advisor, warns investors to focus on strategy and asset allocation as opposed to being blinded by volatility.

Any firm that wants to grow needs to consider how to best manage one of its key assets—its people. Unfortunately, Matt Matirisian reminds us, although most advisors are great entrepreneurs and visionaries, they are not necessarily good people managers.

Securities regulators are reviewing a proposal that would require the riskiest money-market mutual funds to adopt a floating share price, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The firm scored particularly well in clients’ feelings of their investment advisors, account information and investment performance, according to a J.D Power study.

Reports that aging clients may not be able to make sound financial decisions because of declining cognitive skills may be overstated, said Laura Carstensen, professor of psychology and head of Stanford University’s Center on Longevity.

A new study attempts to quantify the very real effect that low interest rates and muted yields in certain asset classes could have on investors' retirement planning.

Technology innovations are critical for advisors to remain on the cutting edge and retain the next generation of clients.

With Mother’s Day just around the corner, millions of Americans are shopping for flowers and gifts. But some advisors may want to offer female clients something more substantive: financial security.

“This is not an easy business,” Carson told an audience on Thursday of over 500 advisors at the 24th Peak Excell Meeting. “It is a rewarding but difficult business … and we have to constantly reinvest and reinvent.”

Want a technology investment with a real payoff? Steer clear of hot Internet stocks. Instead, make a technology investment in your own practice.

For solo practitioners, who's got your back? Here's how one group of RIAs decided to support each other.

Personnel development is key to making firms successful. The risk of not putting in the effort to develop employees is having potential successors walking out the door.

Advisors are not doing a good enough job planning for health care costs. To better serve clients, advisors must understand the realities of health care, despite many unknowns.

Which financial institutions "get" LinkedIn? Jennifer Grazel, the social media network’s global head of category development - financial services, offers up several examples.

Among pre-retirees who worked with advisors, 73% said that did not expect to carry debt into retirement.

There are certain common traits and behavioral patterns of the more effective advisors, according to blogger Ken Haman. Of course, not all advisors demonstrate every one of these characteristics, but most of the highly successful people he's been privileged to work with exhibit at least several.

In order to capitalize on the opportunity to focus on female clients, you may be required to break some habits of the past.

Fidelity reported a 53% increase in health savings accounts opened in 2012, raising the number of individual accounts administered by the company to 182,000.

Advisors who expect their clients’ wealth will grow over the years, and help them to build their practices along the way, are likely to end up disappointed, according to a new statistical analysis of data from 7 million clients representing $3.5 trillion in invested assets.