Insurable Interest Canadian Insurance Blog

Are your clients getting deeper into alternative investments nowadays? It’s something that many clients are seeking, and we’ve expanded our offerings. One of our investment specialists [focuses] on investing in alts. What’s your “Retirement Roadmap,” as you call it? It’s a financial plan we do to align advice with what the client is trying to accomplish: when they would like to retire, income they’ll need, as well as addressing any other financial matters they might have, whether philanthropic or leaving money to the next generation, tax efficiency and estate planning. Please describe the business development team’s M.O.  They reach out to various companies to tell them about The Mather Group and invite them in for a [complementary] consultation. So one of the things we talk about is providing a free financial plan to evaluate their situation. Please elaborate. When we sit down with a prospect, we do a free initial financial plan to look at their current situation and see if there might be opportunities to be more efficient. How effective is that free investment audit? Very effective, because many times clients really want a second set of eyes on their situation to make sure they’re doing everything in their...

“We drove the strongest quarter in years in investment flows,” Sieg said. His abrupt personnel changes rankled some executives, prompting bankers to defect. In response, Citigroup offered dozens of retention bonuses to staff, particularly in the Wealth at Work unit and to some in the private bank, rewarding them for staying into next year, according to people familiar with the matter. That move followed the exodus of about 20 people from Wealth at Work, which caters to clients in professional services such as law firms. Their leader, Joe Ryan, was named interim head of the franchise after the unexpected resignation of his boss, Naz Vahid. But Ryan jumped to BMO Financial Group after he wasn’t interviewed to replace her permanently, a person briefed on the matter said. The private bank, serving the wealthiest clients, has lost about 10% of its most senior bankers in North America over the past year, reducing its fleet to about 120. Departures included top rainmaker Luke Palacio, who catered to Florida’s billionaires. He joined Bank of America, which announced two more hires from Citigroup late last week. Even some new arrivals didn’t last long. Just four months after Sieg named Don Plaus, his former deputy...

But what happens if parents decide that they need the funds for their own retirement? While they can easily change the named beneficiary of the 529 plan account to their own, what implications might that have with respect to the 15-year rule? Would the change of named beneficiary for the 529 account restart the duration clock? That wasn’t Congress’ intention in setting up the rules, Slott and Levine offered, but it’s not completely clear at this point. The same is true with how the $35,000 limit “per beneficiary” would apply in cases where a parent saves a lot more than that amount (or funds multiple 529 plan accounts to the maximum) and decides not to use the money for other people’s education costs. It would seem that an owner of a 529 account that held more than $35,000 in unneeded assets could theoretically change the beneficiary multiple times and then do a series of rollovers out of the 529 plan that would add up to an amount greater than $35,000. It is not clear what Congress’ intent was in setting up this new rollover framework, according to Levine and Slott, and it is possible that lawmakers did not plan to...

Forty-four percent of self-directed clients in the new study strongly agreed that they expect their wealth management firm’s websites and apps to help them meet their financial goals, up from 40% a year ago. Among this group who expect these tools, 30% said they do not strongly agree that their firm is delivering on this expectation. This percentage rises to nearly 80% among those who say they somewhat agree that they are expecting help. When websites and mobile apps meet key criteria for delivering beyond foundational levels, overall satisfaction scores among both full-service and self-directed clients rise substantially, by more than 100 points on a 1,000-point scale. Moving to the top of the hierarchy results in truly differentiated experiences, respondents said. Clients’ perceptions of data security strongly influence overall satisfaction scores, according to the study. Among full-service clients, satisfaction scores are 147 points lower when they have concerns about their personal information being very secure. For self-directed clients with those concerns, scores are 145 points lower. “In a world in which firms are offering no-fee trades and many of the basics of the user experience are similar from one brand to the next, the digital experience hierarchy has increasingly become...

“Expulsion would likely put Alpine out of business, and would do so before the SEC performs a full review of Finra’s decision,” wrote Millett, a Barack Obama appointee. Maranda Fritz, a lawyer for Alpine, said after the ruling that Finra “exercises enormous power over participants in the securities industry while insisting that it need not abide by the Constitution.” Finra said in a statement that it was reviewing the decision. Wall Street Watches The lawsuit has attracted the attention of Wall Street, which is overseen by a number of self-regulatory organizations, or SROs, including stock exchanges and clearinghouses. Those SROs have warned of significant disruptions to the markets if Alpine wins the case. Other groups, including one represented by former Attorney General William Barr, are supporting Alpine’s stance that citizens aren’t guaranteed their constitutional rights under the current structure. U.S. Circuit Judge Justin Walker, a Donald Trump appointee, dissented in part to the opinion, saying Finra should be stopped altogether from wielding enforcement authority. “The problems with Finra’s enforcement proceedings run even deeper,” since it “wields significant executive authority when it investigates, prosecutes, and initially adjudicates allegations against a company required by law to put itself at Finra’s mercy,” he...