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Taking Hands Off the Paper Jam

August 2, 2010 - Fund giants continue trudging on the paper treadmill.

Funds Still Out of Touch With Adviser Needs

January 25, 2010 - Funds Still Out of Touch With Adviser Needs

SEC Votes to Propose Revamp of 12b-1 Fees

July 26, 2010 - Long-contested issue finally meets the SEC impasse. But industry insiders say they're ready to fight.

Advisers March to the Social Media Beat

July 19, 2010 - Advisers March to the Social Media Beat

Crisis Aftershocks Compel Recalibrations at Advisors

May 31, 2010 - BOSTON -- Boom and busts in the financial markets are nothing new. However, the landscape emerging in the aftermath of the crisis of 2008 is far different from anything asset management executives have seen before. Be nimble, be quick and be ready to answer to discerning investors-institutional and retail. "There have been four standard deviation events in the past 10 years, not least of which was the $15 trillion that was wiped out [in the Great Recession] and the $2 trillion deficit facing pension funds. Nevertheless, you've been there before," said Neeraj Sahai, Citi's Global Head of Securities and Fund Services, at NICSA's General Membership Meeting here on May 20.

Platform Offers Hedge Expertise to Advisers

May 10, 2010 - Two veterans of the hedge fund world are touting a product they say lets advisers focus less on investment decision-making and more on business development and client service. The Hedgeable Advisory Platform, from Hedgeable.com, aims to solve what the company's chief executive officer calls the biggest problem portfolio managers face: what to buy and sell, and when. "People have been burned over the last 10 years," said Michael Kane, who co-founded the New York company with his brother, Matthew Kane. "People are lost, and they want to [find] a new way of managing money."

Post-Recession Distribution Strategies

May 3, 2010 - The aftershocks of the financial crisis have left us with fewer distributors, increased investment scrutiny by analysts, and the most severe competition for assets in the history of the industry.Now that we are embarking on the "new normal," per PIMCO's Bill Gross, executives need to pause and revisit their distribution strategies to face these new challenges head on. Here are the key strategies that will focus and optimize distribution, and lead post-recession organizations to success.

ING First to Register Indexed Annuity

April 5, 2010 - ING is launching a registered indexed annuity, called Select Multi-Index, in May, which it is voluntarily registering the indexed annuity with the Securities and Exchange Commission. While ING says the move to register the product has more to do with marketing the product to wirehouse reps leery of unregistered products, the SEC has been trying to bring indexed annuities under its remit for some time now. Indexed annuities have proved tricky for regulators to define, since they sit squarely in between fixed annuities and variable annuities in terms of design. Currently, anyone with an insurance license can sell an indexed annuity, just as that person could also sell a fixed annuity-but not a variable annuity, which is considered a securities sale by regulators.

High Time for New Tools

April 5, 2010 - Not long ago, I asked a group of advisers who read my newsletter, Inside Information: Given all the recent market turmoil, what future, after-inflation market returns are you using in your retirement projections and Monte Carlo simulations-and why? The collective median and average numbers were a bit surprising. But far more interesting was the way that advisers are thinking these days. Ten years ago, if asked a similar question, most advisers would have confidently said that the historical returns over the last 40 or 70 years were X and that there was no good reason to think we could outwit history, so X was their number. The only main difference between one adviser and another would have been how far back they looked.

Roth IRA Conversions Could Put $3 Trillion in Play

March 26, 2010 - While the Roth IRA offers the tremendous advantage of tax-free investments, it has long been the stepchild of Individual Retirement Accounts. Traditional IRAs totaled $3.167 trillion in assets at the end of 2008, according to the Investment Company Institute. Roth IRAs, previously available only to those making less than $100,000, had only $173 billion. Since the new rule went into effect on Jan. 1, 61% of leading fund companies have been taking advantage of the enormous sales opportunity that Roth IRA conversions present by proactively educating investors.

Vanguard Thinks Online With Targeted Ads

March 22, 2010 - Vanguard Group plans to spend more on advertising this year as it increases its spending on targeted marketing online. Last Monday, Vanguard announced a multi-channel advertising campaign that encourages investors to "Stop just investing and start Vanguarding." Sean Hagerty, a principal at Vanguard and its head of retail marketing and communications, said that ads will run in financial publications, mainstream newspapers and online. "This is not that different than places we have run ads in the past, but we have put a heavier emphasis in online," he said. "More than half of our ads will run online."

MetLife's $2 Trillion Mass-Market Mousetrap

March 22, 2010 - MetLife believes that the once-ignored "emerging investor" is becoming critical to asset managers and advisers as firms try to figure out how to retain and recruit new clients. Eighty million households have $25,000 in investable assets, according to MetLife, yet until now account minimums of $100,000 and above have prevented this rapidly growing group of up-and-coming investors from getting the investment advice they need. This is why Jeffrey Wilk and Rebecca Kovatch, vice presidents of MetLife Broker/Dealer Group, have decided to focus the group's strategy this year on this burgeoning segment of the market.

BoA Plays to Merrill Strength in Ads Aimed at Near-Retirees

February 22, 2010 - Bank of America plans to spend $15 million to $20 million on a new advertising campaign targeting retirees. The four-month "help2retire" campaign, which launched this month, will include national print and television advertising as well as billboards and online ads.BoA said the campaign encourages individuals to work with a Merrill Lynch adviser to find areas of their lives that they would like help in "retiring," such as confusion around Roth individual retirement account conversions.

Estate Tax Expiration Reveals Opportunities

February 8, 2010 - NEW YORK - Financial experts think 2010 could provide many interesting opportunities in the realm of wealth transference, particularly with the temporary, one-year expiration of the federal estate tax and reduction of the gift tax.Thanks to the expiration of the estate tax on Jan. 1, beneficiaries of people who die this year don't have to pay federal taxes on inherited estates. Unless Congress takes action this year, the tax will be reinstated in 2011 to 2001 levels of a $1 million exemption and 55% tax rate above that. President Barack Obama has proposed reinstating the tax at 2009 levels of 45% on anything above $3.5 million, possibly retroactively.

Extreme Makeover: 401(k) Edition

February 8, 2010 - Investors are about to test drive 401(k) plans with a 21st Century whole new look and feel.The Department of Labor is promising streamlined rules for 401(k) advice that plan sponsors may actually use (see "Week in Review," page 4). The government is looking into the possibility of offering annuities or other lifetime income options in defined contribution plans.