InvestmentSense

Recently, Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta penned an op-ed for the announcing that the Department of Labor’s (DOL) long-debated fiduciary rule would not be delayed any further, and is set to go into effect on June 9.

But what does that mean for investment and wealth professionals?

At our Annual Conference Experience earlier this month, we had a number of speakers discuss the fiduciary rule—what it is, what it means, and where it’s going in the months ahead. ACE kicked off with a pre-conference workshop presented by Blaine Aikin, CFA^®, CFP^®, AIFA^®, executive chairman, fi360, providing a crash course in the fiduciary rule; later in the week, Marcia Wagner, principal, The Wagner Law Group, discussed how the rule stands to impact wholesalers specifically (watch for a follow-up blog post on that topic). Here are some of the key takeaways from Aikin’s presentation you should know:

• The fiduciary standard will be broader, and many who were not subject to it before may be now. According...

Sustainable investing—a common catchall term for socially responsible (SRI), environmental, social, and governance (ESG), and impact investing—has become sufficiently mainstream so it isn’t a great idea for an investment advisor to say, “We don’t do that,” said Jon Hale, head of sustainability research for Morningstar Investment Management. “Conversely, advisors who make it a specialty will be gaining a valuable differentiator.”

To help advisors learn about what can appear to be a daunting...

To fend off the many threats that investment advisors face—from robo-advisors to competitors reducing fees—advisors need, above all, to learn to fully describe what they do for their clients, said Andrew McFetridge, CRPC^®, national sales manager for the wirehouse channel of John Hancock Investments.

“Advisors unquestionably are worth the fees they charge,” McFetridge said recently in a session at IMCA’s 2017 Investment Advisor Forum. “The money saved in just one instance when an advisor talks...

“The bull market has a ways to run and investors are missing out if they favor defensive positioning, as many are doing,” said Richard Bernstein, chief executive officer and chief investment officer, Richard Bernstein Advisors LLC.

“We are not even close to a recession,” Bernstein explained in a session at IMCA’s 2017 Investment Advisor Forum recently. He likened the record inflows into bonds in summer 2016 “at the worst possible moment” to the flood into equities at the height of the tech...

Like all contemporary professions, the conference planning industry is evolving. IMCA hosts more than 4,000 attendees at our 10 conferences and seminar programs each year, so I thought I’d share a brief post on what we’re doing to evolve.

IMCA’s meeting planners are the best in the business (in my humble opinion) at creating an intimate, inviting, and innovative atmosphere within each event. Hundreds of live-event options are available to financial advisors each year—many free or sponsored by...

Today, everyone faces a dizzying array of choices across all aspects of their lives—from what kind of coffee to drink to which dating website to search, to how to invest for the future.

While it is widely assumed that the more choice we have the better off we are, “too much choice can paralyze people in their decision-making,” said Sheena Iyengar, a Columbia Business School professor who has done extensive research on the subject and recently presented at IMCA’s 2017 Investment Advisor Forum.

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