Retirement planning

A doctoral candidate and his advisor from Texas Tech University won the Retirement Income Industry Association's first Thought Leadership Award, the association announced at its fall conference Tuesday.

Investors appear to have switched gears from focusing on replenishing their balances from 2008’s market downturn to taking all of the responsible steps to prepare for retirement, according to Principal Financial Group’s analysis of retirement plan participants’ behavior in 2010.

When it comes to retirement income, clients are concerned about rising health costs, and they probably also should be concerned about long-term care, said a top executive of Merrill Lynch's Retirement Income Program, in a keynote address at the Retirement Income Industry Association's fall conference.

Top economists who spoke here at the Insured Retirement Institute annual conference told attendees to brace for fundamental paradigm shifts as they wait for global and domestic economies to stabilize.

Janus has just launched a new online retirement income program for financial advisers, called Janus Time Segmentation Framework. The surprising part: it seems better designed for advisers than it does for their clients.

MassMutual Retirement Services’ 2011 campaign to prompt 401(k) participants to save more has succeeded in boosting deferral rates by 4.34%. It also was aimed at getting those who were not saving into the game, and helping those with portfolios to revisit their allocations.

401K GPS has launched it personalized 401(k) monitoring service, to ensure participants’ strategies fit their risk profile. While the service monitors portfolios on a daily basis, it issues quarterly recommendations on how investors should reallocate their holdings, based on retirement goals and market expectations. Should volatility in the markets become pronounced, 401K GPS will issue intra-quarterly alerts.

With people living longer and retirements stretching to 35 years, the need for income is greater than ever.

The director of the MetLife Mature Market Institute discusses how financial advisors can best serve baby boomers.

Whether it's simple or not, retirement plans are suddenly important to small business owners.

Retired investors revolt against failed investment strategies.

Calculating the worth of your practice requires placing a value on different types of capital.

A significant number of advisors who serve 401(k) plans will ramp up their retirement income planning practices over the next few years, according to a new report from Principal Financial, called the “2011 Best Practices in Retirement Income Planning Study.”

New York Life Retirement Plan Services has reorganized into four industry-focused service teams serving: Taft-Hartley, technology, finance and professional services, and manufacturing, materials and retail. Each of these teams will have its own relationship managers, communications consultants, investment specialists and ERISA consultants.

Eighty-four percent of 401(k) sponsors surveyed by Mercer and the U.S. SIF Foundation (formerly known as the Social Investment Forum Foundation) believe that sustainable and socially responsible investing (SRI) funds will either hold steady or grow in the next five years.

Last month the Insured Retirement Institute released yet another in the long line of reports indicating the majority of baby boomers are nowhere near ready for retirement. Since we can’t slow down the clock to give them more time to prepare their financial capital, consultant and author Keith Weber says maybe it’s time we start helping them prepare their human capital.

Investors who relied on professional help in the form of target-date funds, managed accounts and advice earned nearly three percentage points more than those that did not, according to an analysis of eight large defined contribution plans between 2006 and 2010 by Aon Hewitt and Financial Engines. The plans covered 400,000 participants with $25 billion in assets.

Retirement Benefits Group on Monday announced that three retirement specialists from Morgan Stanley Smith Barney’s The Fraser Group have joined the San Diego-based retirement-focused branch of LPL Financial.

Investors reaching or in retirement are much more likely to stay in the stock market if they’re invested in financial products that provide guaranteed income. That was one of the major findings this week from an online survey Prudential conducted in May of this year.

Investors reaching or in retirement are more likely to stay in the stock market if they’re invested in financial products that provide guaranteed income, an online survey of 1,000 Americans shows.