Bank Investment Consultant articles from November 2007

Bank Investment Consultant archives from November 2007

New Frontiers.
November 1, 2007... Building a successful business depends on your ability to outmaneuver the competition. You can do it simply by communicating more effectively with banks' typical brokerage clients-retirement age, mass affluent; most advisors' bread and butter....

Bank Brokerage's 25th Anniversary.
November 1, 2007... Bank brokerage was born on Nov. 5, 1982, on a balmy Florida morning when broker Al Doremus at Coast Federal Bank, a savings and loan (S&L) institution in Sarasota, Fla., closed the first sale. "It was the very first stock trade in the lobby...

Small-Bank Brokerage Is On The Rise.
November 1, 2007... Community banks' investment revenue grew by 9.5% from the first quarter to the second quarter of 2007, totaling $129.7 million, according to an Oct. 3 analysis by Michael White Associates. Total first-quarter revenues for community banks were...

MetLife Targets Banks With New LTC Product.
November 1, 2007... Insurer MetLife thinks banks can be the distribution channel of choice for its new, simplified long-term-care product. "Our LTC sales through banks are modest, maybe 5% of total sales," says Paul Sylvester, Metlife's national sales manager for...

Wachovia Pitches HSAs for Retirees.
November 1, 2007... Wachovia, preparing to enter the health savings account (HSA) fray, hopes to differentiate itself by presenting its version of the product as particularly suited to retirees. The development of Wachovia's HSAs will be led by the retirement...

A.G. Edwards Defections Rankle Wachovia.
November 1, 2007... Another recent marriage between a bank and a broker-dealer is showing strain. On Oct. 1, A.G. Edwards shareholders sold the St. Louis firm to Wachovia for $6.8 billion, closing the deal, but raising the question of whether the $720 billion...

Wells Aims to Convert 25,000 Fee Accounts.
November 1, 2007... Wells Fargo launched an enhanced advisory account on Oct. 1, in an attempt to retrieve the 25,000 fee-based clients from its now-defunct WellsChoice product. The bank had to drop its fee-based WellsChoice accounts when the federal court...

The Young and the Debtless: The industry has set its sights on retiring baby boomers, but many of their offspring are getting rich and flying under advisors' radar. How do you find them and what do they want?
November 1, 2007... Quick question: The kid over there in the scruffy jeans, pecking away at his laptop in Starbucks. Is he updating his MySpace profile, or emailing his employees some final thoughts about an upcoming product launch? The young woman headed into...

Starting a Medical Practice: Helen Whitson's struggle to win the medical profession's investment business is finally paying off-big time.
November 1, 2007... Investment services often are not what the doctor ordered-MDs are usually too busy to make retirement plans for themselves and their employees. But with a great deal of perseverance, Helen Whitson, a senior vice president at the Bank of...

Milking Mergers for Prospects: Changes in ownership often make clients nervous enough to jump ship.(Company overview)
November 1, 2007... Creating urgency with a prospect is key to the sales process; it is also one of the toughest core competencies for advisors to master. It's not only the art of compelling your clients and prospects to act, but to act soon. This can be...

A Five-Step Plan.
November 1, 2007... Follow these pointers to profit from a competitor's merger. 1. Develop a plan. Make it specific. Include goals for the number of relationships, assets and commissions you intend to capture. Write it down. 2. Size up the playing field....

Automating Retirement: Automatic enrollment in 401(k) plans helps advisors gather assets while their small-business clients maximize their investments.
November 1, 2007... Automatic enrollment in 401(k)s, where employees actually have to opt out of the plan, has been around since the 1990s. But new rules introduced in the Pension Protection Act of 2006, and further clarified by the Department of Labor, have made...

Preparing for Private Equity: As these alternative investments rack up great returns, more clients may begin asking you about them.
November 1, 2007... Private equity investments have been making headlines lately. They seem to be where the smart money wants to go. To be sure, private equity investing has traditionally been limited to ultra-high-net-worth clients, but the outsize returns...

Overseas ETFs: International exchange traded funds are a great way for investors to get economical and efficient exposure abroad. It's time for bank brokerage to get on board.
November 1, 2007... Americans have never been internationalists-whether in politics or investing. But as the world shrinks and the economy goes global, investors have been turning to mutual funds that focus on international stocks and bonds. But international...

Moving Into Munis: The ever-expanding ETF universe now includes tax-free products. But are they a good deal?
November 1, 2007... Given the soaring popularity of exchange traded funds, it had to happen. Municipal bond ETFs hit the market this fall, and it probably won't be long before financial advisors will offer them to bank investment clients. On Sept. 10,...

The Stealth Tax: Millions of middle-class clients are falling into the AMT trap. Here's how advisors can help.
November 1, 2007... The alternative minimum tax (AMT) is no longer just a rich man's problem. In fact, if Congress doesn't take action soon, a plummeting exemption level could push a huge number of mass affluent taxpayers into AMT liability. Planners expecting to...

Managing Incentives Stock Options.
November 1, 2007... Incentive stock options (ISOs) can trigger the AMT. Normally clients don't pay taxes on the difference between the exercise price of the option and the current market value per share. Under the AMT, that difference is included as income at the...

Prospecting in the Northwest.
November 1, 2007... BIC: What new opportunities are opening up in your territory? Argites: Microsoft is here and it hires a lot of people from overseas. Half of my clients are non-U.S. citizens; they want to invest, but they're unfamiliar with how things work....