Insurable Interest Canadian Insurance Blog

CityWire first reported this week on the change, expected to take effect in February. The 7-day yield on Fidelity’s SPAXX fund was 4.27% on Tuesday, according to Fidelity’s website. As CityWire noted, Fidelity uses the SPAXX fund for retail clients’ cash sweep balances. Kitces.com, the website for investment strategist and speaker Michael Kitces, posted on Facebook: “A reminder once again that when we consume an RIA custodian’s services ‘for free,’ they’re not really free, and the custodian HAS TO generate revenue somehow to provide the services it does. If we don’t pay directly, it will be extracted from our clients.” FCASH has been the only core sweep account option for new non-retirement brokerage accounts managed by RIAs for the last year, and also has been the only core sweep account option for changes made to any new or existing non-retirement core sweep accounts. Several investment managers, including JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, LPL Financial, Morgan Stanley, Ameriprise Financial, Merrill and PNC Financial Services, have been sued in recent months by customers who allege the firms have enriched themselves at clients’ expense by charging below-market rates on uninvested cash balances. Image: Shutterstock

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...