With 2010 almost upon us, firms rushed to make their end-of-year changes and introduce new programs.

Chase Introduces New Charitable Initiative through Facebook

Chase’s new Community Giving Program allows customers to vote, through Facebook, for their favorite charities, with top vote-getters receiving donations from Chase. In some ways, Chase’s Community Giving Program is a hybrid of two innovative programs previously introduced by other credit card issuers: Citibank’s Make a Difference program, introduced earlier this year, also utilizes Facebook as a platform through which users can help solicit donations to their favorite charities, while American Express’s Members Project, which ran in 2007 and 2008, allowed card holders to vote for new projects that would be funded by AmEx. Continue Reading »

A recent Schwab survey (discussed in this Financial Planning article) has two interesting data points:

• Less than half of surveyed brokers (46%) feel their employer’s brand helped them attract clients
• More than 80% feel their clients are loyal to them (that is, the advisor) and not the firm

Granted, this was a small survey (200 respondents), but it does highlight one of the central challenges that marketers at wirehouses have: how to achieve the right balance between supporting the advisor and creating loyalty to the firm directly with the investor.

Indeed, during many of our mystery shops over the years, brokers often lead with the value that he or she brings to the relationship over that of the firm. We’ve even had a few brokers tell us, “When it comes down to it, all the firms provide the same thing.” (!)

So the questions firms need to focus on are: Are we providing our advisors with all the tools and resources they need to build and grow their businesses? How can we stand out in the advisors’ minds as the one place to be to become the most successful? What can we do for their clients to make us the firm of choice?

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As readers of our Credit Card Monitor Update know, Barclay’s recently announced their Gconomy Visa Card, which rewards customers for environmentally friendly actions like recycling. Bank of America also offers an eco-conscious card – the Brighter Planet EarthSmart Points Visa – which works to build renewable energy projects across the US.

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As we mentioned in this week’s Mutual Fund Monitor – Advisor update, Franklin Templeton’s Mark Mobius has entered the social media waters by launching a blog and Twitter profile. Over the past several months, I have had many conversations with mutual fund executives about how best to tackle social media. Indeed, at the recent MFEA Star Awards conference, social media was one of the most-discussed topics. In light of this, it is refreshing to see Franklin Templeton launch this blog and there are some useful takeaways for fund executives to learn from:

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On Wednesday, I had the pleasure of moderating a panel discussion at the annual MFEA STAR awards in Chicago focusing on social media within the asset management industry. It was a lively discussion and a topic that is clearly on the minds of fund executives. Over the course of the day, there were a few recurring themes and issues, which I thought I’d highlight here as they are relevant to any financial firm exploring the social media waters: Continue Reading »

The big news for September revolves around Roth conversions. In the advisor realm, there was an influx of promotions surrounding the 2010 Roth conversion opportunity. A number of firms in our coverage groups are now supplying their advisors and brokers with new online marketing materials to help get ahead of the competition.

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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 »

When we first reviewed financial services’ involvement in social media in our report, Social Media: Trends and Tactics in the Financial Services Industry, released in late 2008, we found that mutual fund firms were the slowest segment to accept social media into their marketing plans. In fact, none of the 24 total firms that we track for Mutual Fund Monitor and Advisor had even launched Twitter accounts at that time.

Recently, however, we’ve seen a definite shift towards a slow acceptance of social media, mainly in Twitter. As mentioned in a Corporate Insight blog post in May, Vanguard Blazes a Social Media Trail for Mutual Fund Firms, it was noted that Vanguard had just taken major strides in the mutual fund social media world by starting a blog, registering a Facebook page, and launching a Twitter account. We projected that we would see more of the same from other mutual fund firms. Continue Reading »

When the dust settled on a tumultuous first quarter, the writing was on the wall for variable annuity issuers: adapt your product or continue to lose market share to safer, cheaper alternatives. According to LIMRA, U.S. variable annuity sales were down 27% compared to the first quarter of 2008. During the same period, fixed annuities outsold variable products by over four billion dollars, rising a startling 78% in contrast to Q1 2008 totals.

The response from firms was emphatic, resulting in sweeping changes to risky product features as well as the discontinuation of numerous VA products. Hit hardest were the popular VA living benefit riders whose gaudy guarantees became unsustainable as the economic downturn intensified. Continue Reading »

Recently, I’ve noticed that a lot of consultants seem to be hosting webinars to help financial advisors understand how to leverage social communities like Twitter and Linked-In to build their businesses. While these webinars might be useful to those who are new to social media, most address only the most basic aspects of these different platforms. Many gloss over the regulatory risk inherent to these tools. I found this somewhat disturbing since many of the financial institutions we’re in contact with have cited FINRA rules as a barrier, if not the barrier, to their adoption of a social media strategy.

On Sunday, Investment News published an interesting article entitled, “A Warning Before You Twitter,” addressing the compliance issues advisors face when participating on these sites. Reiterating many of the same concerns we’ve heard from our clients, the article suggests that, while it may be possible for advisors to use these tools in a responsible and legal fashion, pre-approval requirements make spontaneous communication difficult, which detracts from the value of participation.

That’s not to say that financial institutions can’t benefit from social media - hardly; we presented several success stories in our Social Media report recently. Still, firms must tread carefully, considering the compliance implications every step of the way as they develop and implement their social media strategy. Industry consultants and the firms they serve cannot turn a blind eye to these issues.