Acting to avert bankruptcy for the nation’s two biggest home loan lenders, Congress approved an emergency “rescue package” over the weekend of July 12-13 that gives the Treasury Department the ability to inject billions in investments and loans to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Sponsored By:

DWS Scudder, the U.S. retail brand name of Deutsche Asset Management, provides financial advisors with a comprehensive selection of innovative investment strategies.
www.dws-scudder.com

Sponsored By:

DWS Scudder, the U.S. retail brand name of Deutsche Asset Management, provides financial advisors with a comprehensive selection of innovative investment strategies.
www.dws-scudder.com

Globalization. We hear the term over and over nowadays yet it’s often hard to define succinctly because it encompasses myriad issues. At its core, globalization means to make worldwide, and as we know, virtually every industry—particularly financial services—is conducting business around the globe. As part of that financial services community, advisors—whether they’re attuned to it or not—are being touched more and more by globalization. Advisors’ failure to embrace and prepare for the ever-increasing changes that globalization will present to their businesses will ultimately determine their future success.

Sponsored By:

DWS Scudder, the U.S. retail brand name of Deutsche Asset Management, provides financial advisors with a comprehensive selection of innovative investment strategies.
www.dws-scudder.com

One of the benefits of working with advanced planning networks is that they can add the right kind of specialist to deliver a better solution for the client than an advisor might be able to achieve working on her own. Private Placement Life Insurance is a powerful solution that’s also powerfully intricate. In the late ’90s PPLI was first offered by several small companies, and then, mainstream players such as New York Life, AIG, Sun Life, Prudential, and Mass Mutual joined in and the solution’s appeal grew.

Sponsored By:

DWS Scudder, the U.S. retail brand name of Deutsche Asset Management, provides financial advisors with a comprehensive selection of innovative investment strategies.
www.dws-scudder.com

Does demand drive innovation or does innovation create demand? Or are both true? When Mike Patton looks at the landscape in our industry he sees consumers looking for objectivity.

Sponsored By:

DWS Scudder, the U.S. retail brand name of Deutsche Asset Management, provides financial advisors with a comprehensive selection of innovative investment strategies.
www.dws-scudder.com

In the latest post Mike Patton takes readers through a typical week in the life of an independent advisor—client meetings, writing and distributing an electronic newsletter and shopping for insurance.

Sponsored By:

DWS Scudder, the U.S. retail brand name of Deutsche Asset Management, provides financial advisors with a comprehensive selection of innovative investment strategies.
www.dws-scudder.com

Lewis Schiff muses about the difference between affluencers and affluentials, not to mention the influence of the affluent.

Sponsored By:

DWS Scudder, the U.S. retail brand name of Deutsche Asset Management, provides financial advisors with a comprehensive selection of innovative investment strategies.
www.dws-scudder.com

Sponsored By:

DWS Scudder, the U.S. retail brand name of Deutsche Asset Management, provides financial advisors with a comprehensive selection of innovative investment strategies.
www.dws-scudder.com

The nonprofit world has changed dramatically in the three decades since Form 990 was last updated.

Sponsored By:

DWS Scudder, the U.S. retail brand name of Deutsche Asset Management, provides financial advisors with a comprehensive selection of innovative investment strategies.
www.dws-scudder.com

The long-time clients—a Boston-area couple in their early sixties—plan to retire soon from their respective Fortune 100 executive positions and spend most of their time overseas at their second home in the south of France. They also want to be closer to their children: a son living in Madrid who is married to a citizen of Spain, and a grown daughter now residing in London.

Sponsored By:

DWS Scudder, the U.S. retail brand name of Deutsche Asset Management, provides financial advisors with a comprehensive selection of innovative investment strategies.
www.dws-scudder.com

According to our recent survey, just over 77 % of America's Middle Class Millionaires, those with a net worth between $1 million and $10 million that they have earned, rather than inherited, say that a recession is imminent. Further, an overwhelming number of them, 93%, do not believe the government will offer relief or a significant bail out plan.

Sponsored By:

DWS Scudder, the U.S. retail brand name of Deutsche Asset Management, provides financial advisors with a comprehensive selection of innovative investment strategies.
www.dws-scudder.com

Sponsored By:

DWS Scudder, the U.S. retail brand name of Deutsche Asset Management, provides financial advisors with a comprehensive selection of innovative investment strategies.
www.dws-scudder.com

New research on the habits of Americans who espouse typical middle-class values but have assets of more than $1 million show these people have a distinctly different set of beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors involving work and wealth-building than other Americans. These attitudes and competencies, which we group together under the rubric of “Millionaire Intelligence,” can be summed up as four essential qualities: hard work, networking, enlightened self-interest, and self-efficacy.

Sponsored By:

DWS Scudder, the U.S. retail brand name of Deutsche Asset Management, provides financial advisors with a comprehensive selection of innovative investment strategies.
www.dws-scudder.com

Sponsored By:

DWS Scudder, the U.S. retail brand name of Deutsche Asset Management, provides financial advisors with a comprehensive selection of innovative investment strategies.
www.dws-scudder.com

As I write this article, I am having an outer body experience. I can swear I am in the midst of a Seinfeld episode. But alas, the smell of cigars coming from one side of my chair doesn’t emanate from Kramer and the high-pitched cackling laughter from the other isn’t Estelle Costanza, and I am not in a Seinfeld episode at all. I am poolside in a retirement community in southern Florida.

Sponsored By:

DWS Scudder, the U.S. retail brand name of Deutsche Asset Management, provides financial advisors with a comprehensive selection of innovative investment strategies.
www.dws-scudder.com

“I only have one rule about wealth managers,” Mark Tibergien likes to quip, “they must have wealthy clients.” If the current managing director of Pershing Advisor Solutions and former Moss Adams practice management guru has difficulty defining such a key segment of today’s advisory universe, what hope is there for we mortals?

Sponsored By:

DWS Scudder, the U.S. retail brand name of Deutsche Asset Management, provides financial advisors with a comprehensive selection of innovative investment strategies.
www.dws-scudder.com

Like it or not, the first wave of an anticipated 76 million baby boomers nearing retirement is headed your way. Are you and your financial planning practice ready for it? We’re not just talking about having sufficient staff or a large enough coffee pot. No, we’re asking you to consider whether you and your partners and employees are up to speed on issues specifically related to the aging investor population.

Sponsored By:

DWS Scudder, the U.S. retail brand name of Deutsche Asset Management, provides financial advisors with a comprehensive selection of innovative investment strategies.
www.dws-scudder.com

To work with high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth clients, you need both a deep understanding of a family’s complex emotional dynamics and a comprehensive spreadsheet of a their assets. As we discussed last month, these two pools of information fuel the discussions and solution strategies produced by the advanced planning team. Before the team can start to work, however, advisors need to dig for the truth that can hide behind the client’s responses. You can’t proceed to the analysis stage without a complete profile, yet for many affluent and ultra-affluent clients, the initial impulse is to speak guardedly to protect their privacy.

Sponsored By:

DWS Scudder, the U.S. retail brand name of Deutsche Asset Management, provides financial advisors with a comprehensive selection of innovative investment strategies.
www.dws-scudder.com

Focus Financial Partners has agreed to acquire Manchester, England-based Greystone Financial Services Ltd., making the U.K. wealth management firm the 15th “partner firm” in the Focus Financial stable. Greystone advises on some $1.6 billion in assets from about 5,000 clients; the acquisition is expected to close April 1.

Sponsored By:

DWS Scudder, the U.S. retail brand name of Deutsche Asset Management, provides financial advisors with a comprehensive selection of innovative investment strategies.
www.dws-scudder.com

…we are on the brink of a revolution in the financial planning industry. This sea change is being led by a successful financial planner who happens to be a Buddhist teacher, and a former president of the ICFP who has taken a hankering to a mythical Islamic folk hero. If they have their way, financial planning in the future will not only foster a client’s economic well-being, but also will help that client to be more fulfilled, happier, and a better citizen in the world of tomorrow.

Sponsored By:

DWS Scudder, the U.S. retail brand name of Deutsche Asset Management, provides financial advisors with a comprehensive selection of innovative investment strategies.
www.dws-scudder.com