During the course of our weekly research, we read a number of industry news sources and come accross several articles about the industry, firms we track, products, and so forth that are worth reading. Poring throught the myriad industry resources is not an easy task and we figured our clients face their own daunting reading list. Thus, we thought it would be useful if we cull that down a bit and use our blog to highlight the several articles that we felt are worth a review. We’ll try to do this weekly and please feel free to respond by posting links to any articles you think are relevant.

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With living benefit riders a hot-button issue in the annuity industry, we at Annuity Monitor have seen a variety of literature, promotions and online features added to help advisors sell living benefit guarantees to prospective clients, or to publicize new products and enhancements.

In that light, we recently took particular note of Nationwide’s Sevolution campaign, one of the more extensive living benefit promotions and, frankly, the most sensational campaign of any kind we’ve come across. The Sevolution campaign promotes the Lifetime Income rider, which had its roll-up rate increased from 5% to 7% – an enhancement heralded as a “revolution in living benefit roll-ups.” A centerpiece of the campaign is a Flash-based video displaying a hectic assortment of quick, grainy scenes and images having to do with the number seven – Seven Wonders of the World, 7th inning stretch, seven dwarves, etc. Announcer-style voiceover reiterates the “revolution” campaign theme.

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The cover story of our latest Consulting Newsletter highlights some of the ways financial services companies are creating a personalized online experience for their users (to register to receive this free quarterly publication, click here). Personalization is a growing trend across the Web as a whole, and we expect to see a lot of personalization in online financial services in the coming years.

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In October 2007 we started work on CI’s Direct Savings Report, our first-ever in-depth look at the direct savings account (DSA) offerings of 11 leading firms. At the time, two firms offered an APY of 5.05% and a few others hovered around 5.00%. Nobody offered anything less than a 4.00% rate.

In retrospect, October 2007 was a heady time for DSAs. Shortly after beginning our project, the Fed made two major rate cuts and savings rates plummeted. Right now, the highest rate of any of our 11 firms is 4.10%, and the average APY has fallen to around 3.50%.

Though interest rates have fallen (and may fall
further still), DSAs remain an attractive savings option for a number
of reasons. First off, even the lowest DSA rate (which currently stands
at 3.00%) is far higher than the rates offered on standard savings
accounts and many money market accounts.

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We recently received an email from American Express stating that we may be part of a class action suit against the firm. We have received notices of class actions frequently with our many brokerage accounts (which often require hours of paper work to receive $3.57 while the attorneys receive millions), but what was unusual about this email is that the Class Counsel (the guys suing AmEx) have asked for the email addresses of all people who may be in the class.

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Last week I attended the Mutual Fund Education Alliance’s annual Strategic Summit. There were several excellent presentations, but one in particular raised a very important point about the future tax outlook and, based on what we’ve seen, the industry as a whole is doing their clients a major disservice by ignoring this issue.

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In a recent Mutual Fund Monitor - Advisor report, we discussed how firms were providing advisors with resources for calming their clients in times of market volatility. We’ve also seen this topic show up in client communications of brokerage firms. For example, searching on "market volatility" within in the Broker Monitor Collateral section of our client site results in four pieces we’ve received since last year

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We just returned to New York after spending 4 days in gorgeous Palm Springs, California for the 2008 NAVA Marketing Conference and I must admit that the 20 degree temperatures in the Big Apple are difficult to handle right now. Now that I have had a chance to reflect on the conference, I think the elective session which left the biggest impression on me was the wonderfully orchestrated “STP Live” presentation.

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