Home of the Registered Investment Advisor
By Lavonne Kuykendall
Source: Investment News
Advisers who sold stock for investors last year and didn’t pay attention to new cost basis reporting rules may be in hot water once their clients get their investment account tax forms. Those 1099 forms will carry the original purchase price, or cost basis, for equities sold in 2011. In most cases, experts said, the cost basis of the sale of stocks was determined by account defaults.
By Bruce Kelly
Source: Investment News
In the wake of the real estate bust, tenant-in-common investments are coming back to bite the broker-dealers that sold them when times were booming. Investors recently have won a series of Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Inc. arbitration awards stemming from TIC exchanges, which involve tax-deferred swaps of property ownership interests.
By James Carney, ByAllAccounts
Source: AdvisorOne
It’s a fact. Investors rely on referrals to find the financial advisor they want to work with. According to a survey that ByAllAccounts conducted recently, in conjunction with the Paladin Registry, almost 46% of the individuals who responded say they found their current advisor through a referral from a friend, respected associate, CPA or attorney.
By Robert Laura
Source: Financial Advisor
I believe financial advisors of all types can dramatically improve their client relationships (resulting in more client loyalty, and referrals) by paying more attention to the psychology of decision-making than to investment fundamentals, especially when it comes to retirement income planning, says Robert Laura, president of SYNEGOS Financial group.
By Anne Field
Source: Registered Rep
When Jon Yankee and his two partners started their firm six years ago, they wanted to do it right. Among other things, that meant putting in place a clearly-thought-out compensation plan for both advisors and staff. For many advisory firms, the matter of getting their compensation right is especially critical now. That’s because it’s harder than ever to find new advisors.
By Michael Kitces
Source: Nerd’s Eye View blog
Once upon a time, the purpose of a client vault was to use it like a vault. It would store important client documents to be accessible if/when needed. But in recent years, the vault became not only the place we store the files we access rarely, but the ones we access regularly. Advisors increasingly made it the centerpiece of their efforts to securely share files and collaborate with clients. Yet in reality, this is quite impractical.
Source: Financial Advisor (FA News)
Market and economic uncertainty may have prompted many Generation X and Y investors to hesitate over whether they should invest in a retirement account this tax year, according to a new survey. Only 45 percent of Generation X and Y investors plan to contribute to an Individual Retirement Account (IRA) this tax year, according to a survey by T. Rowe Price.
By Mark Miller
Source: Registered Rep
The spoils of the 401(k) market have always gone to the large players – big retirement plan providers providing the best, most efficient plans to big plan sponsors. But small is starting to look beautiful. Some of the industry’s leading retirement plan providers have launched new offerings aimed at small workplace plans – a market segment that traditionally has born the highest all-in costs.
By Bruce Kelly
Source: Investment News
Mark Casady, chief executive of LPL Investment Holdings Inc., is upbeat about LPL Financial LLC’s prospects for recruiting big-time brokers, particularly in the wake of recent and pending acquisitions for wealth management firms that offer specialized services to representatives and financial advisers. “The work we’re doing to enhance our platform and to provide new services is definitely leading to more business coming to us,” he said recently.
By Jerry Gleeson
Source: Registered Rep
The partners at Merrill Lynch’s Beirne Wealth Management Group had talked off and on over the years about leaving the wirehouse, John Beirne Jr. told Gleeson (the author), but it took a new sales policy from the company headquarters last April to push the practice out the door. The practice had developed a specialty working with public pension funds; but in April, Merrill told its advisors that they couldn’t solicit new public pension plan accounts.
