Practice management

As your practice expands, you inevitably take on new roles and responsibilities. That doesn’t mean there aren’t any growing pains.

When people hear “financial planning” or “retirement income,” they tune out. Try using “lifestyle design” instead to get their attention.

Who wins when advisors leave wirehouses? Just about everyone.

A rise in schemes targeting advisors has prompted the SEC to seek new protections. But it’s not clear how far the proposed rules would go.

An article on the topic Tuesday generated a lot of buzz on Twitter and resulted in an interesting discussion about best practices for financial advisors when communicating with wealthier clients.

You’re a financial advisor, not a technology expert -- or at least you shouldn’t have to be. But you and your staff need to feel comfortable with the technology platforms that are vital to your practice.

A new generation of business students will soon be trained in investment and wealth management skills at a new Charles Schwab Trading and Technology Lab at the University of California at Irvine. The lab wilkl be the cornerstone of a new 78,000-square-foot building to be built within the University's Paul Merage School of Business.

A proposal to tighten regulation of foreign banks in the U.S. would also significantly expand the central bank's oversight of foreign broker-dealers, effectively snatching supervisory responsibility from the SEC.

The Marketing Maven offers marketing insights from the Ladenburg Institute of Women and Finance Symposium

The Securities and Exchange Commission has tapped David Grim for the No. 2 spot in the Division of Investment Management, the bureau that oversees federally registered investment advisors.

Financial services compliance technology firm RegEd is offering clients a social media library containing pre-approved content, as well as a series of dictionaries, or lexicons, of words or phrases to support compliance.

The collective voice of independent financial advisors just got a little bit louder.

Wealthier clients spend more than half their communications time digitally, using email, web portals, social networking, SMS, instant messaging and VOIP calls.

A FINRA arbitration panel has dismissed a claim that Stifel illegitimately poached a number of legacy A.G. Edwards advisors.

You can use a well-organized advisory board to get strategic advice from the people who are your most valuable assets. Here are a few suggestions for running a group.

If referrals play a key role in your marketing plans for the year, here are some key elements that must be addressed.

Alarmed at a set of conditions that could invite sales abuses and eventually a market correction, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority enters 2013 with a warning to investment advisors that the group plans to keep a close eye on the industry and hold advisors accountable to its new suitability rule.

Two former wirehouse advisors have gone independent in Baltimore and Bethesda, Maryland.

Paul Lofties, who has been promoted to senior vice president of wealth management at Securities America, said that reaching wealthy investors has been a challenge for independent broker-dealers because “traditionally, high-net-worth individuals have done more investing with wirehouses” but he has a strategy for success.

The current economic recovery, while slow, is on track. Fiscal cliff fears have been grossly exaggerated, to the detriment of investors and planners. And sometimes there’s an upside to a modest recession.