The Fine Madness of the 401(k) Business

Most of the workshops and discussions at the NAPA Summit in San Diego were devoted not to the pending DoL fiduciary proposal but to potential solutions to the problems that retirement plan advisors grapple with every working day.

Vanguard Answers a Retirement Riddle

Why do so many affluent retirees pinch pennies, when could enjoy life more? Sellers of annuities and long-term care insurance may be interested in the answers that Vanguard and a team of academics came up with.

Value Investing for Retirement

“Purgatory is what I’m calling our set of forecasts,” said Ben Inker, GMO’s co-head of asset allocation, at the Morningstar Institutional Conference in Phoenix last week. “We won’t make much for seven years. But then we’ll see a steady rise to heaven.”

Live, from NY: Daniel Kahneman

Kahneman, co-recipient of a Nobel Prize for his work on behavioral finance and author of the best-seller, 'Thinking Fast and Slow,' spoke with informative grace and humor at the IMCA conference in New York a few weeks ago.
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Voya enters the structured variable annuity game

The product resembles other structured variable annuities in the marketplace, issued by MetLife, AXA, CUNA Mutual and Allianz Life. These products offer more upside potential than fixed indexed annuities because the owner assumes some risk of loss.
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Ameriprise and Bank of New York Mellon settle ERISA suits

Ameriprise Financial will pay $27.5 million to settle charges that its own 401(k) plan investment options were too expensive and Bank of New York Mellon will pay $84 million for offering unfavorable pricing to most of its 'standing instruction' foreign exchange clients.

New York City comptroller calls for statewide “fiduciary disclosure”

“Billions of dollars in savings are lost each year because of hidden fees and conflicted financial advice,” Scott Stringer said, borrowing a theme from the Obama administration, which has made a fiduciary standard for advisors to rollover IRA clients a policy priority for 2015.

How much should your clients start saving now? EBRI knows

The traditional 'replacement rate' method of gauging retirement savings adequacy ignores the risk of outliving one’s savings, post-retirement investment risk, and nursing home costs, according to the Employee Benefits Research Institute.

Quote of the Week

“You go to the doctor to make you feel better. But a doctor doesn’t have to make someone else sick in order to make you feel better.” Gus Sauter, retired Vanguard CIO, on the zero-sum nature of transactions in the equity markets, during an address at a Society of Actuaries meeting on active vs. passive investing..