Earlier this week, the bulk of the 2009 Credit CARD Act came into force. The new law includes regulations covering many aspects of the card business, including APRs, Fees and statement design. As a part of a drive for fairness in payment processing, the CARD Act includes a number of provisions relating to card account payments. For instance, clients now must be given at least 21 days between the date a bill is mailed and it become due, payments received by 5 pm ET on the due date must be considered timely and the Payment Due Date must fall on the same calendar date each month. While these may seem like common sense provisions, they represent a break from the way billing and payments processing has been done by many firms in the past.

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According to Limra (via a story in this morning’s Ignites), total US VA sales were down 18% from 2008, though it seems most of the loss ocurred in the first half of the year. Given the shambles that was the financial market in general last year, this statistic is not too surprising, but it will certainly be on the minds of attendees at the upcoming IRI conference in New York starting Sunday.

If you are planning to attend, please drop by and see us at our booth. During the conference, we’ll be unveiling a new paper that looks at the state of annuity advisor websites. Using our website audit methodology, this paper will provide readers with the top five firms and best practices in the following categories:

• Advisor WEbsite Design & Usability
• Advisor Product Information & Marketing
• Advisor Sales Resources
• Advisor Sales Tools
• Advisor Literature Order Systems
• Advisor Services

I will also be leading a panel discussion Social Media and what place it has within the annuity industry. Joining me on the panel will be Jon Caddell, Digital Advertising Director at ING Financial Services; Stephen Johnson, Director Participant Services Marketing at TIAA-CREF; and Don Montenaro Chairman & CEO of TradeKing. I hope to see you there!

E*TRADE announced to many of its banking customers today that the firm has sold some of its existing savings accounts to Discover Bank.

According to an email from E*TRADE, clients who currently have a Complete Savings Account from E*TRADE Bank will have their accounts converted into a Discover Online Savings Account as of March 7th, 2010. E*TRADE’s email points out that other banking and brokerage accounts at the firm will be unaffected by the transfer to Discover Bank. While neither firm has yet released much information about the account conversions, a link within the E*TRADE client email leads to a welcome page from Discover Bank. Continue Reading »

January was an interesting month with firms wasting no time introducing new products and advertising campaigns. There was a new contest from Fidelity, new products from American Express and AXA Equitable, a new statement design from Vanguard and upcoming statement changes announced from Barclays and Discover.

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FINRA this week published guidelines around social media in Regulatory Notice 10-06. While I’m no lawyer, there appears to be a few things that were clarified with this notice:

• Records of social media communications will need to be retained as required by Rules 17a-3 and 17a-4 under the 34 Act. This alone might scare firms away from using social media tools – especially smaller firms. But, rest assured technology providers will find a solution that will make it easy for firms to do this. Continue Reading »

InvestmentNews posted an interesting piece yesterday covering 8 ways that wholesalers get blacklisted by advisors. There are some good things here, but they are probably best summed up by one comment: “Be a good business partner.”
 
Really, this is professional services selling 101 and the examples posted here should be obvious to anyone who has been in sales. The fact that InvestmentNews posted this shows people are still violating the fundamentals. Some might argue that this is a reason to rely on e-wholesaling. My take is that while there are many reasons to pursue an e-wholesaling strategy, it should not be the only distribution method of your wholesaling team. People are still important, but if your people cannot add value to the relationship they have with advisers, they are wasting your clients’ time and your money.

What do you think? What is the right balance between e-wholesaling and live reps?

Report: Practice Management Tools for Advisors

This report examines the sales topics and practice management materials available behind login on advisor sites. While firms frequently release sales ideas and find ways for advisors to sell their products, back-office issues frequently go ignored. Since practice management skills are essential for building a business, firms should take the time to provide advisors with tips for gaining and retaining clients, in addition to standard product-selling information.

To read more information, please visit our website.

After months of discussing social media here on our blog and in our research, we thought we’d kick off 2010 by expanding our own efforts in this realm by enhancing our commentary with video. So, welcome to our first of what we hope will be an ongoing series of video interviews and comments with our analysts.

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