Guiding Clients Through the Medicare Maze

Medicare counseling can be an excellent marketing tool for advisors, especially those who are positioning themselves as retirement specialists. Just ask Ash Toumayants of State College, Pa.

The Essence of Goal-Based Investing

Goal-based investing is more than just mental accounting that assigns labels like “house,” “college” or “retirement” to different pots of money. It's ultimately about risk management, as we learned from Lionel Martellini, director of France's EDHEC RIsk Institute.

AIG Tops Annuity Sales Chart Again

Eight years after collapsing under the weight of CDS losses and four years after emerging from federal ownership, AIG is again atop the annuity sales charts, with $9.78 billion sold in the first half of 2016. (Pictured: AIG CEO Peter Hancock).

Yale, MIT and NYU Sued over Retirement Plan Fees

The universities' retirement plans were the latest to be sued by the law firm of Jerome Schlichter (pictured at his office in St. Louis) for violations of fiduciary duty. The suits charge that the schools should have bargained for lower fund expenses and administrative fees.
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The Cost of Retirement Age Uncertainty

At age 23, Americans would give up as much as $1 out of every $25 of future personal spending to know exactly what year they would retire, a new research paper suggests. Is there a market for retirement age uncertainty insurance?

Positive Words about Negative Rates

If Fed chair Janet Yellen had to choose between setting a higher inflation target and forcing short-term interest rates into negative territory in order to lower real rates during the next recession, her predecessor would recommend the latter.
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Financial Engines prepares to roar

Counting on synergy between its institutional managed accounts and its 120 newly-named Financial Engines Advisor Centers, the Silicon Valley managed account giant wants to aggregate all of a middle-market client's assets, says EVP Kelly O'Donnell.