Sounds Like a Plan
A directory of 27 software tools accompanies this overview of the rapidly evolving financial planning technology industry.
Lion’s Share
ING U.S. Retirement will combine its own target date funds with the AllianceBernstein three-insurer annuity platform to offer a lifetime income option to its 52,000 small and mid-sized plans.
The Outer Limits of Outsourcing
Advisors can’t do everything themselves. But they need to be careful in choosing what to hand off to a software tool, a vendor or an assistant.
Four Income Planning Tools
Here are brief reviews of four noteworthy but not-widely-known retirement income planning software tools, provided by the publisher of Virtual Office News and the T3 Newsletter. Mr. Bruckenstein is also a CFP.
Featured
Pacific Life launches GLWB for indexed annuity and ‘O-share’ variable annuity for Edward Jones
Pacific Index Choice now has an optional lifetime income benefit for 75 basis points and the Pacific Destinations VA comes in a new and cheaper share class.
News
New York Life resolves itself to a duo
The company reorganized itself into two basic divisions, an Insurance Group run by Chris Blunt and an Investments Group run by John Y. Kim. Kim will succeed Blunt as head of the Retirement Income Security (RIS) business.
January rally led by institutional investors: TrimTabs
Much of the year-to-date gain in U.S. stocks has occurred in overnight futures trading, said Trim Tabs executive vice president David Santschi.
RMB seen as third reserve currency, after dollar and euro
Holding RMB is important for investors who have global aggregate portfolios or diversified global bond portfolios, said Jim McCaughan, CEO of Principal Global Investors.
What’s in an advisor’s title? Still not much, says Cerulli
Many advisor practices “offer some of the basic elements of financial planning, but focus their efforts nearly exclusively on asset accumulation strategies,” Cerulli said in a release.
The Bucket
Brief or late-breaking items from Milliman, the Insured Retirement Institute, the Financial Planning Association, the Association for Financial Counseling and Planning Education, Fidelity, Swiss Re, Putnam Investments, DTCC, the American Academy of Actuaries, the Society for Human Resource Management, and Ameriprise Financial.
Burton Malkiel Talks About Efficient Markets
In this video sponsored by Vanguard, Burton Malkiel, Princeton professor and author of "A Random Walk Down Wall Street," talks with RIJ editor Kerry Pechter about what "efficient market" means to him. The 10th edition of "A Random Walk" has just been published.
The Red (Ink) Peril
A British Lord, professor emeritus and biographer of John Maynard Keynes explains why government debt is a misused scare tactic.
