CNBC posted a number of videos in which they interviewed several of the banking CEOs who were present at the meeting in Washington on Friday. Well worth the few minutes to watch.

In response to unprecedented rough-and-tumble market conditions, Fidelity recently launched a new GPS (Guide to Personal Savings) program to promote the firm’s guidance services, as we highlighted in our recent e-Monitor Update. This includes a series of free investment seminars around the country, as well as increased focus on “do-it-yourself” online guidance tools. The program stresses Fidelity’s ability to help investors through all life stages - from early savings to retirement and beyond. Continue Reading »

The recession has certainly had a major and well-documented impact on annuity providers; however, the economic pressures being felt by reinsurers have gone mostly under the radar. Insurers generally use reinsurance to back guaranteed income features on annuity products. With capital drying up due to low interest rates and plummeting equity values, insurance companies and reinsurers are in a similar bind in terms of keeping financial commitments to their clients. Continue Reading »

A recurring theme throughout the 2009 NAVA Marketing Conference was the need to increase the implementation and utilization of new technologies in the annuity industry. A number of speakers and vendors pushed the idea that resources such as planning tools, online sales platforms and video conferencing can help reduce costs, increase distribution channels, drive up sales numbers and help advisors give clients better financial guidance. Continue Reading »

According to comScore, worldwide internet users reached the 1 billion mark in December:

Surpassing one billion global users is a significant landmark in the history of the Internet,” said Magid Abraham, President and Chief Executive Officer, comScore, Inc. “It is a monument to the increasingly unified global community in which we live and reminds us that the world truly is becoming more flat. The second billion will be online before we know it, and the third billion will arrive even faster than that, until we have a truly global network of interconnected people and ideas that transcend borders and cultural boundaries.”

This is, indeed, a major achievement and one that will have repurcussions we have yet to fathom. Within the world if retail financial services imagine what 1, 2, or 3 billion globally connected people can do for markets. Assuming we emerge from the current woes without losing our ability to innovate and desire to grow our businesses, the market opportunities this represents over the years are huge. I’ll admit I am not a futurist, but I am an optimist and I can’t help but think these numbers will lead to good things. And given the incessant drubbing the media feeds us day-in and day-out, I thought we could use a little optimism right now.

H/T: Mark Perry, Carpe Diem Blog

CNBC had a segment today with Charlie Gasparino that forecasts a fall for JP Morgan’s CEO Jamie Dimon. JP Morgan has largely come out of the recent financial mess smelling like roses and the media has lauded Dimon for his management during the crises. According to Gasparino, “the chickens are coming home to roost.”

Here’s the link to the CNBC segment and here’s the link to the article on The Daily Beast that Gasparino mentions.

It’s been a tough close to 2008, so here’s to a happy, healthy, and prosperous 2009 for all!

- The Corporate Insight Team

Late last month, Corporate Insight released a report analyzing the financial service industry’s online response to the financial crisis. After reviewing public, private and advisor site homepages for over 90 top firms we came away with the impression that the financial service industry had not done enough to reassure worried investors and advisors during the market turmoil.

As a follow-up to the online market messaging report, we thought it would be a good idea to look at how firms responded to the crisis using a more traditional medium, postal mail. Thus, we began sifting through the account mailings we have received over the past month in search of market messaging that serves to calm investor concerns, reinforce a firm’s financial strength, etc. Unfortunately, the response is nearly non-existent so far. Continue Reading »

I spent the yesrterday at JFAM:Live, a conference for financial marketers put together by the folks at the Journal of Financial Advertising and Marketing. During the sessions, the topic of relevancy in advertising came up. In the ad world, relevancy, which could be considered the holy grail of advertising, is about getting the right ad in front of the right person at the right time. For example, if a high-net-worth person were in the market for a new convertible and saw an ad for the BMW 325i convertible just as he were thinking about test driving a car, this ad would be very relevant, and very effective. In the world of financial services, it might be presenting an ad for a rollover IRA to a person who is a week away from retiring. Of course, doing that consistently is very, very difficult. Indeed, knowing what your target audience is thinking, when they’re thinking it and being able to act on that seems, well, Orewellian (or at least Googlian).  Continue Reading »

On the heels of my colleague John Cantwell’s recent blog post about banks and Youtube, I sat down for an interview with Kelsey Hubbard at MarketWatch to talk about how the financial services industry is using this site to engage their customers.