Published by Michael Ellison on 18 Sep 2009
Ignites posted a video recently of Mark Jamison’s comments at Schwab’s recent Impact conference in which he discusses the five things advisors can do to ease investor angst.
His list included be empathetic, connect and be caring, validate, be optimistic, and be solution oriented. He is absolutely correct but I don’t think the points are limited to advisors alone. Continue Reading »
Published by Dan Wiegand on 15 Sep 2009
In the Spring issue of our Consulting Insights publication, we discussed the recent rise of a number of new, innovative online aggregation services. There, and more recently in this blog post, we highlighted Mint.com as a leader in providing valuable, customer-friendly personal financial management (PFM) tools and advice. Apparently PFM software giant Intuit saw significant value in Mint as well, acquiring the firm for an impressive $170 million in a recently-confirmed deal.
Published by Ian Lundahl on 10 Sep 2009
As August wound to a close, several firms took the opportunity provided by the dog days of summer to improve their sites and unveil new site features. The list of firms making changes includes Citizens Bank, Fidelity, ING Direct, Scottrade, TD Ameritrade and Vanguard.
Published by David Rosenberg on 04 Sep 2009
New legislation set to take effect in 2010 removes the $100,000 MAGI limit for Roth IRA conversions, greatly expanding eligibility. Beginning in 2010, people can convert to a Roth IRA regardless of their income… but many investors may not have even known about it if they relied on information from their brokers alone. We simply have not seen many brokerage firms addressing this issue, until recently that is.
Our Merrill Lynch broker recently sent us an email with a couple of Q&A guides from the firm regarding the expanded Roth IRA conversion eligibility and this is the first time, in fact, that any of our brokers have addressed the issue. The upcoming change is a result of a provision in the Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act (TIPRA) of 2005.
This is certainly a big deal because Roth IRAs have a number of benefits not available in Traditional IRAs, and with the income restriction removed, many more individuals can take advantage of them. This is something that brokerage firms should promote, since it can be a better retirement savings option for some clients. It makes sense that we have not seen this highted heavily up to this point, since it does not go into effect for another four months. But as we get closer to the end of the year, we expect to see this become more front-and-center when firms talk about retirement savings.
