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Bernie Madoff's Family May Face Charges
February 12, 2010 @ 10:41 AM | By Greg MacSweeney

It has become clear that authorities may be getting closer to pressing charges against other members of Bernie Madoff's familiy, including brother Peter and sons Mark and Andrew. Peter Madoff's lawyers have admitted that he is under criminal investigation, but declined to say for what he is being investigated. The attorney for Mark and Andrew says that the sons continue to cooperate with investigators and that they had no prior knowledge to their father's crimes. This video clip from MSNBC has more details.

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Need Stock Advice? Some Investors Are Turning to Psychics
January 08, 2010 @ 10:28 AM | By Greg MacSweeney

With Wall Street so up and down, it's hard for any expert to get a sharp reading into where the markets are heading. So some investors are looking into other options to find out about future financial fortunes. American Public Media’s Cash Peters has the story. Obviously, I’m sure many of financial advisors, brokers and wealth managers would object to this type of advice.





Optimism Fades Heading Into 2010
December 18, 2009 @ 09:07 AM | By Greg MacSweeney

A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll tells that the economic crisis is taking its toll on the national psyche. WSJ's Jerry Seib explains what this declining optimism could mean for the economy and the Obama administration and incumbents running for re-election in 2010. But the broader question is how long the economic hangover will impact society.




New SEC Rules for Financial Advisers
December 18, 2009 @ 08:04 AM | By Greg MacSweeney

The SEC has taken a lot of heat for not catching Bernie Madoff earlier during his Ponzi scheme. Now the Commission has announced new rules it hopes will prevent another Bernie Madoff-like scandal from happening again. Ashley Milne-Tyte from American Public Media reports in this audio clip.




Bank of America's Rosy 2010 Forecast Based on Strong Emerging Markets, Low Inflation
December 14, 2009 @ 01:45 PM | By Penny Crosman

Despite the 10% unemployment and 3.9 million foreclosures in the U.S. this year, Bank of America Merrill Lynch's global research group are highly optimistic about economic growth for the U.S. and the world for the coming year, economists in the group said at a press conference today. These economists forecast global domestic product will grow 4.4% in 2010, led by China at 10%. Inflation will be low, U.S. equities will perform well, and the dollar will strengthen against some other currencies, these number-crunchers say.

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Bernie Madoff's Life Behind Bars
December 11, 2009 @ 09:49 AM | By Greg MacSweeney

Bernie Madoff, the architect of the biggest Ponzi scheme in history, has served about five months of his 150-year prison sentence. While in prison, he is spending time with other white collar criminals, as well has hanging out with crime boss Carmine Persico and Jonathan Pollard, the Israeli spy, according to this report from the Wall Street Journal.




Techy "Brains" Behind Madoff Ponzi Scheme Arrested
November 13, 2009 @ 11:29 AM | By Greg MacSweeney

One of the unanswered questions surrounding the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme was how did Madoff fool so many people for so long? Well, in addition to a lot of charm, charisma and leveraging his good reputation in the industry, Madoff also had help from a couple of programmers who allegedly falsified records to fool SEC inspectors. In fact, it’s playing out just like a Hollywood movie script. The face of the operation (Madoff) supposedly had help from a couple behind the scenes programmers who helped make the entire fraud possible. Slaving away in a back room somewhere on the 17th floor of the Lipstick building (the home of the Madoff firm at 53rd Street and 3rd Avenue), the duo created a false paper trail that helped fool regulators and calm investors. I wonder if they had pocket protectors, short sleeve dress shirts and wore big glasses? They probably didn’t, but I’m sure the movie director will have them wearing the stereotypical computer nerd attire when the blockbuster Hollywood film is made.

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Hedge Fund Copycats Show Promise
November 13, 2009 @ 07:50 AM | By Greg MacSweeney

Reuters columnist Christopher Swann says that hedge fund replication could make hedge fund-style strategies available to Joe Public — reducing retail investors’ almost total dependence on stocks. Hedge fund replicators’ fees are much lower (around 1 percent) and they don’t lock up capital for long periods of time. However, the replicator funds are relatively new and it’s hard to gauge how they will perform in the long term.




Investment Managers Remain Bullish
November 03, 2009 @ 10:58 AM | By Greg MacSweeney

The portfolio managers surveyed in Barron's latest Big Money Poll think stocks could move 10 percent higher by June 2010, but the danger signals are rising. Barron’s video correspondent Clare McKeen reports that 60 percent of investment managers are bullish or very bullish about the prospects of the market through the middle of 2010.




Investors Take Aim at Brokers
October 21, 2009 @ 10:44 AM | By Greg MacSweeney

Thousands of investors hit with losses last year are filing arbitration claims against their financial advisors -- and their odds of winning look to be rising, according to Clare McKeen, a video correspondent for Barrons. Since the market meltdown a year ago, nearly 5,000 arbitration cases have been filed this year, up 65 percent from a year ago. So far this year, investors have won 45 percent of cases against advisors. Moreover, post Madoff, Congress is considering letting disgruntled investors take their claims straight to court, which may increase the number of cases that investors win.





BNY Mellon’s Successful Integration
October 19, 2009 @ 10:28 AM | By Greg MacSweeney

In case you missed it, here is a video featuring Donald Monks, Vice Chairman and Head of Integration at BNY Mellon, that focuses on the complexities — and costs — of mergers in financial services. M&A is hardly a new topic for financial services firms. However, much of a merger’s success depends on how quickly and efficiently the new bank can combine two organizations into one. Often, firms struggle to streamline information technology, resulting is duplicate systems, extra personnel and higher costs.

Monks, who headed the integration of The Bank of New York and Mellon Financial, shares his views on BNY Mellon’s successful integration. I caught up with Monks in Hong Kong this past September while at the Sibos 2009 financial services conference and he discusses where the largest cost savings can be found (infrastructure), how to control access to applications (identity management), how banks can satisfy the cost savings demands driven by shareholders, and more.




Is It Time to Retire the 401(k)?
October 08, 2009 @ 10:26 AM | By Greg MacSweeney

The 401(k) is not working for millions of Americans. According to Richard Stengel, managing editor at Time Magazine, the 401(k) was originally created by Congress as a tax dodge for executives, not as the primary investment retirement vehicle for most of the country’s workers. Time’s article, “Why It’s Time to Retire the 401(k)” explores the dangers of the primary retirement fund for about 73 million Americans. In fact, rank-and-file workers weren’t even eligible for the 401(k) when it was first introduced 30 years ago. Over the past five years, workers who had a standard alignment of investments in their retirement portfolio have actually seen their savings decrease. Financial experts propose an “insurance pension plan” that reduces the risk associated with wild market swings that decimated 401(k)s over the past few years.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy




Trustee to Sue Madoff Kin
September 28, 2009 @ 10:02 AM | By Greg MacSweeney

The trustee charged with recovering money for Bernard Madoff's victims says he plans to sue Bernard Madoff’s brother Peter; his sons, Andrew and Mark, and niece Shana for negligence and breach of fiduciary responsibility.


Watch CBS Videos Online

And there's more ...

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Brokerage Statement Leaders & Best Practices
July 21, 2009 @ 11:19 AM | By Michael Ellison

Monthly statements are often the primary form of communication between a firm and its clients, allowing brokerages to show each customer – clearly and simply – what they own and what they’ve done with their account recently. Given the challenging market environment, now more than ever it is essential for brokerage firms to provide a clear and complete account review to their clients via the account statement. Every year, Corporate Insight reviews the statements we receive through our client accounts by running them through our rigorous benchmarking audit criteria. Our analysis focuses on a number of different categories including design, content, customization and “green” issues such as e-delivery.

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Brokerage Statement Leaders & Best Practices
July 21, 2009 @ 11:19 AM | By Michael Ellison

Monthly statements are often the primary form of communication between a firm and its clients, allowing brokerages to show each customer - clearly and simply - what they own and what they've done with their account recently. Given the challenging market environment, now more than ever it is essential for brokerage firms to provide a clear and complete account review to their clients via the account statement. Every year, Corporate Insight reviews the statements we receive through our client accounts by running them through our rigorous benchmarking audit criteria. Our analysis focuses on a number of different categories including design, content, customization and "green" issues such as e-delivery.

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How Much for Lunch with Warren Buffet?
June 22, 2009 @ 08:47 AM | By Greg MacSweeney

How much would you pay to have lunch with "The Oracle of Omaha," Warren Buffett? Tess Vigeland from American Public Media Marketplace talks to Mohnish Pabrai, who two years ago was the winning bidder in the mogul's annual charity auction. Pabrai, a money manager who runs a value fund, paid around $650,000. Here is Pabrai's account of his three-hour lunch meeting with Buffet.





Independent Research Runs Out of Funds
June 11, 2009 @ 10:06 PM | By Greg MacSweeney

It seems like yesterday that the stock research scandal threatened to destroy much of Wall Street. Six years ago, we discovered that research analysts at some of the big brokerages weren't being completely forthright with their stock recommendations. If only our current financial crisis was so easy to solve.

Fallout from the Wall Street stock-research scandal resulted in firms having to pay more than $450 million to fund independent market research. Six years later, some $70 million remains of the original fund. But that money will soon dry up as a judge has ordered that the remaining funds be turned over to the Treasury Department.

So now, investors who valued independent research may be left without any alternatives except for brokers research. Although today's research analysts are removed from the banking operations, many are wondering what will happen to the independent research industry, which was heralded only a few years ago as a savior to Wall Street and the investor. Amy Scott reports for American Public Media's Marketplace.

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Peter L. Bernstein Dies, Proponent of Efficient Market Theory
June 09, 2009 @ 08:55 AM | By Greg MacSweeney

Peter L. Bernstein, the author of Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk and other books, died on June 5th at the age of 90. In this McKinsey Quarterly video from January 2008, the well-known author discusses the meaning of risk and explains why sophisticated mathematical models to control it sometimes go awry.

Ultimately, Peter L. Bernstein will be remembered for his development and refinement of efficient market theory, which helped him bring investing theory -- more than simply picking stocks -- to the general public. Bernstein, it seems, advocated increased regulatory oversight to strengthen the foundation of the markets, while also believing that the wealth and opportunity created by a free market were worth the risk. He also was a Keynesian and he argued that the health of the market economy required public spending on various projects.






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Promising Year Ahead for Wealth Management, Thomson Reuters Says
April 20, 2009 @ 01:48 PM | By Penny Crosman

"The finger's come off the panic button," says John Fennelly, global managing director of the wealth management markets division at Thomson Reuters, of the economic environment surrounding the wealth management business. "In September through January, everybody was extremely nervous; who knew what equilibrium would look like?"

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At Long Last, a Facelift for Mother Merrill
April 02, 2009 @ 11:39 AM | By Michael Ellison

At Corporate Insight, we have been tracking and monitoring brokerage websites since 1996 and rarely has one gone so long without a major upgrade as Merrill's client site. While their public website has evolved over the years into an aesthetically pleasing and modern-looking website, the client site has largely languished in a late '90s design, creating a major disconnect between the public face and the private one.

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Davos Diary, Day 2: Another Day, More Bad News from the Banking Industry
January 30, 2009 @ 10:52 AM | By Greg MacSweeney

Guest Blog Entry: by Ashok Vemuri, InfoSys

The mood continues to be very muted here at the WEF in Switzerland, with faces just as long as the coats that block out the bitter cold. While the parameters for the discussion were set yesterday, there is still no one who has set out an agenda or call to action that everyone can rally around to try and find a way out of the current economic quagmire. There are some themes starting to emerge, but everyone is still focused on the problems rather than the solutions.

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Davos Diary, Day 1: What This World Needs Most … Will We Find it at Davos?
January 29, 2009 @ 10:41 AM | By Greg MacSweeney

Guest Blog Entry: by Richard Muirhead, Tideway

I remember January 1997. I was 25 living in an apartment in Russia opposite the Kremlin. Guns were routinely checked at the door in my local restaurant. This was before the stock market crash of 1998, before Putin, before $150 oil prices. I would stay up nights, moonlighting on my first software company and the Internet infrastructure and email client I used in Moscow was already better than what my employer provided. And I was itching to get out there and catch this wave!

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FINRA Says, “Don’t Look At Us”
January 15, 2009 @ 10:28 AM | By Penny Crosman

As Obama’s nominee for SEC chairman -- Mary Schapiro, chief executive of FINRA – gets grilled by the Senate Banking Committee today, a curious point of view from FINRA has emerged. According to Reuters, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, which supervises U.S. brokerages, is disavowing any responsibility with regard to the fraud that took place for decades at Madoff Securities.

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Suicide is No Answer
January 07, 2009 @ 01:21 PM | By Penny Crosman

We’ve now read of five Wall Street types who’ve committed suicide for financial reasons in the past few months (German businessman Adolf Merckle, New Zealand-born but London-based private equity executive Kirk Stephenson, French investment manager Rene-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet, Brazilian trader Paulo Silva and Chicago real estate magnate Steven Good). These are tragedies that needn’t have happened.

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House Financial Services Committee Madoff Hearing (Video)
January 06, 2009 @ 08:54 AM | By Greg MacSweeney

If you missed the riveting, 3.5 hour House of Representatives Financial Services Committee hearing on the alleged Bernie Madoff affair, you missed one of CSPAN’s finest moments. View the full hearing, or a shorter version from CBS News, in the video players on the next page.


DISCLAIMER: Wall Street & Technology is not responsible for viewers’ irritation toward elected officials, Bernard Madoff, the SEC or your rapidly rising level of frustration and blood pressure while you watch this video.

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Markets Bid a Not-So-Fond Farewell to 2008
January 05, 2009 @ 09:04 AM | By Greg MacSweeney

It's been a horrible year for stocks overall, the worst since 1931. Wood Asset Management's Robert Stovall predicts more trouble ahead in 2009. Sam Stovall, Robert's son of Standard & Poor's, and his father review the past year with MarketWatch's Steve Gelsi. (WSJ.com video)

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When financial crisis escalated, firms failed to communicate with worried investors
September 30, 2008 @ 05:41 PM | By Melanie Rodier

When the financial crisis escalated with the fall of Lehman Brothers, the AIG bailout and the sale of Merrill Lynch two weeks ago, firms failed to communicate sufficiently well online with their client base, according to a report.

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Why the Bailout Failed and Ideas for Fixing Wall Street and its IT
September 29, 2008 @ 05:00 PM | By Penny Crosman

Congress’s failure to pass the Treasury’s proposed $700 billion financial bailout package today came as no surprise to Anil Kumar, global head – financial services group at IT services giant Satyam. “They didn’t do a good job of summarizing the plan,” Kumar says. “They’ve got to redefine the plan to be more consumer-oriented, rather than solely based on removing toxic assets from banks’ balance sheets.” He adds, “Unless the housing problems are addressed, I don’t think it will pass.”

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Tools To Help Older Clients Weather the Economic Storm
September 25, 2008 @ 04:02 PM | By Penny Crosman

At least two older people I know live entirely off the income they get from ultra-conservative investments such as Treasury bills. With long-term Treasury notes paying 2-4%, they’re watching their monthly incomes plummet. To pay their bills, they have to periodically sell off some of their principal, a scary thing they hesitate to do, knowing they’ll have even less to live off of.

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Wall Street IT Spending to Drop 5-15% in Wake of Lehman Meltdown, Merrill Merger
September 17, 2008 @ 12:10 PM | By Penny Crosman

Although my head is still spinning due to the crisis of the last few days, Matt Bienfang, senior research director of TowerGroup, has already estimated the impact that Lehman’s bankruptcy and Merrill’s pending acquisition by Bank of America will have on overall IT spending by Wall Street. “Between Bear, Lehman and Merrill you’re talking about 4-5% of the entire industry spend on technology,” he notes, adding that Lehman’s brokerage and wealth management business is bound to be bought and absorbed by somebody [Barclay’s announced Wednesday morning it would buy Lehman's North American investment banking, capital markets operations and supporting infrastructure]. “So Lehman’s technology spend won’t entirely disappear, but it will be reduced.” IT spending for Merrill’s organization should continue, he believes, but the fact that BofA expects to reap $7 billion in savings from the deal means some cutbacks are to be expected.

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Sybase’s Multimedia Messaging Service Goes Live
September 12, 2008 @ 02:49 PM | By Penny Crosman

The global multimedia messaging service Sybase told us about in July is now ready for purchase.

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Measuring the Quality of Your Investors
August 27, 2008 @ 08:17 AM | By Greg MacSweeney

The current economic downturn and skittish investors have left administrators and managers concerned about maintaining a stable capital base and avoiding mass redemptions, says Ron Kashden, president of TKS Solutions in this contributed blog entry.

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Do’s and Don’ts of Setting Up an Asset Management Business in Japan
August 20, 2008 @ 02:18 PM | By Penny Crosman

Watching the Olympic diving competition last night and seeing how after every dive the Chinese athletes humbly bow, making a simple, graceful gesture foreign to most Americans, reminded me of how much we could learn and benefit from other countries' customs and practices. Such an attitude is critical to doing business in Asian countries, according to Roger White, managing director of IT consulting firm Citisoft. White recently completed a six-year stint in Tokyo, where he helped U.S. firms expand their asset management businesses in Japan (while working for PriceWaterhouseCoopers). When he first arrived, “I found everything was different – I had to check everything I knew at the door and learn to do things differently.” He observed that the U.S. firms that took a softer approach to implementing new practices, first trying to develop a deep understanding of existing processes and customs before introducing changes, fared far better than those that slammed their American ways on Japanese employees. Also, White found that demonstrating a new process in front of local employees and proving before their eyes that it worked before making them do it, helped them accept it.

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Wealth Managers Grade Themselves Poorly on Process
July 30, 2008 @ 05:22 PM | By Penny Crosman

Software company Northstar recently polled 5,500 wealth managers and found that on a scale of 0 to 80, the average wealth manager scored his firm a 32 in ability to offer best-in-class, holistic and personalized service.

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State of the Reuters-Thomson Union
July 24, 2008 @ 05:37 PM | By Penny Crosman

Like a wartime marriage, the merger of Thomson and Reuters 90 days ago occurred in the harshest of market conditions – the subprime mess quickly led to losses and layoffs among the companies’ largest customers – and the merged entity appears to be feeling the strain. Thomson Reuter’s stock price has dropped in the last few weeks due to worries that its business will be affected by the Wall Street job cuts.

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Talk to Walt (Bettinger)
July 23, 2008 @ 11:54 AM | By Melanie Rodier

Charles Schwab Corp. named Walter W. Bettinger II as its new CEO, replacing the discount brokerage's founder.

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Scottrade Embraces Web 2.0
June 25, 2008 @ 11:35 AM | By Michael Ellison

A new tutorial webcast added to the public site Podcasts page introduces the firm’s new Scottrade Online Community. Interestingly, we did not find any other mention of the community throughout the public or private site.

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Charles Schwab President Talks about Client-first Strategy (VIDEO)
June 24, 2008 @ 01:33 PM | By Melanie Rodier

At Forrester's 2008 financial services forum for marketing & strategy professionals, Charles Schwab president and COO, Walt Bettinger, spoke to the audience about the key to the company's reversal of fortune since 2004: rebuilding customer loyalty.

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Chat Tools: An Important Component to Customer Service
May 12, 2008 @ 10:02 AM | By Michael Ellison

Instant messaging is now widely used in both personal and professional settings. Convenience is the great appeal of instant messaging – it allows people to multitask and carry on multiple conversations simultaneously. Aside from chatting with friends, work colleagues are communicating with each other and businesspeople are making deals – sometimes in different parts of the world – without even saying a word. It has become a common customer service communication channel in a variety of industries. From the customer’s perspective, it is a pressure‐free way to get answers to simple questions.

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Personal Ads
May 06, 2008 @ 10:46 AM | By Michael Ellison

With more people accessing the Internet via hand-held devices, website developers are being challenged to create online environments that are compatible with a wide range of hardware, from cell phones to widescreen monitors. A recent Business Week technology article highlights the problems this may cause for companies like Google. The search engine giant and other firms that generate revenue from ads must address the fact that there is less ad inventory available on the small screens of hand-held devices.

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Wealth Management Trend: Socially Conscious Investing
April 18, 2008 @ 05:05 PM | By Penny Crosman

In the midst of this quarter's write-downs, layoffs and earnings disappointments, wealth management clearly remains a bright, profitable star on Wall Street -- in Merrill Lynch, for instance, wealth management was most strongly profitable unit this quarter and financial advisors have been promised they will be spared from the upcoming layoffs. In an interesting trend, more wealth management dollars are moving into socially aware investing. According to the Social Investment Forum, socially responsible investing assets in the U.S surged 18% from 2005 to 2007, outpacing broader managed assets. Although this research focused on institutional investors, retail investors are following the same pattern, at least according to Bill Crager, president of Envestnet. He should know; his firm's platform for financial advisors, which is used by 400 broker/dealers, beta tested a socially aware investment vehicle with a handful of small investment firms and attracted $300 million in six months.

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Baby Boomers Prefer Paper Statements and Prospectuses
April 17, 2008 @ 11:48 AM | By Penny Crosman

Aite Group recently asked a group of 505 U.S. baby boomers (251 pre-retirees and 254 recently retired) how they like to receive brokerage financial statements and prospectuses and to what extent they would like these to be paperless. Surprisingly, they're not as willing to forego paper as one might expect in these carbon-footprint-conscious times.

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NAVA Marketing Conference: More Advisor Education Please
February 26, 2008 @ 12:11 PM | By Michael Ellison

Amidst all of the buzz regarding the progress of NAVA’s Straight Through Processing initiative, advisor education is a topic that has come up quite frequently over the first two days of the 2008 Nava Marketing Conference. Indeed, a panel of distributors commented that one of the most important things annuity providers can do is to provide product education to their advisors. Given the importance of advisor education, it is surprising, then, how few firms use their advisor websites in this capacity.

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Someone Needs to Strangle Chicken Little
February 04, 2008 @ 11:50 AM | By Michael Ellison

If you ask investment advisors for a list of their most important investment tenets, odds are that they’ll include a statement along the lines of "Maintain a disciplined investment approach." Translation: don’t get spooked by market volatility.

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130/30 Fund Managers Face Stiff Competition, Many Need Infrastructure Upgrades
January 30, 2008 @ 01:48 PM | By Penny Crosman

In the past few weeks, State Street, Legg Mason, TD Asset Management, Bear Stearns and other asset management firms have introduced new 130/30 funds; all told, about 140 of these funds exist today. But Colin Bugler, director of prime brokerage for RBC Capital Markets, says these asset managers will face intense competition and will need to ramp up their technology infrastructure, particularly those who are new to the business of shorting stock. (To short a stock is to borrow shares from a broker and sell them to another buyer, with the obligation to buy the shares back at some point in time and return them to the lender. It's a bet that a stock's value will drop, enabling you to buy it back at a cheaper price, while having already pocketed the profit from the original sale at the higher price.)

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Little Orphan Annie's Decoder Ring Comes to the Brokerage Industry
January 24, 2008 @ 11:31 AM | By Michael Ellison

One of my favorite movies is A Christmas Story featuring Peter Billingsly. It takes place in the early 40s and highlights the main character's trials and tribulations leading up to Christmas. One of the sub-plots is his desire to get a decoder ring for his favorite radio show, Little Orphan Annie. He finally gets it and it’s a little brass wheel that has 26 numbers corresponding to the letters of the alphabet. He's disappointed when he decodes his first message, which turns out to be an ad: "Remember to drink your Ovaltine." We were reminded of this when we received our new Passcard from Interactive Brokers.

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What is JPMorgan Doing in Luxembourg?
December 13, 2007 @ 02:55 PM | By Penny Crosman

When we read this morning that JPMorgan is opening a hedge fund services office in Luxembourg, we thought, Luxembourg? Isn't that a postage-stamp sized country with a handful of people living in it? (Lacking confidence in our geographic knowledge, we checked wikipedia and found that indeed, Luxembourg is "a small landlocked country in western Europe, bordered by Belgium, France, and Germany. Luxembourg has a population of under half a million people in an area of approximately 2,586 square kilometres (999 sq mi.)" How can a place with less than a half-million people have so many hedge funds that it needs a new hedge fund administrator? We envisioned an exclusive playground for the super-rich being fawned upon by teams of specialized hedge funds.

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Asset Allocation Tools: Helping Investors Put Their Eggs in the Right Baskets
December 12, 2007 @ 09:49 AM | By Michael Ellison

Year end is often a time for investors to reflect upon their portfolios and determine whether their assets are properly allocated and how they might be rebalanced. Over the years, the Internet's capacity to assist in this important task has grown dramatically and online asset allocation tools have been a boon to many self-directed investors.

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The Feds Get Web 2.0 and AARP Doesn't Like It
November 27, 2007 @ 02:52 PM | By Michael Ellison

There was an interesting article in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal (login required):

[SEC Chairman Christopher] Cox also is expected to put up for final vote Wednesday a proposed rule that would enable companies to create online shareholder forums where investors and management could exchange thoughts, establishing a kind of chat room to improve communication. Opposing that model is the AARP, the lobby group for adults 50 and older, which said its studies show that doing so would result in fewer of its members participating in shareholder elections.

A couple of thoughts spring to mind here:

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optionsXpress Goes to the Mattresses
November 16, 2007 @ 09:25 AM | By Michael Ellison

A couple of days ago, I posted about how Fidelity reps made some hay from E*TRADE's troubles. Now, another firm has sent an interesting marketing email to clients.

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One Firm's Pain is a Competitor's Gain
November 13, 2007 @ 03:51 PM | By Michael Ellison

Everyday it seems another financial firm comes forward to admit that it’s facing billions in write-downs due to CDO and sub-prime mortgage exposure. Bank of America, Bear Stearns, Citibank, HSBC, Merrill Lynch, Wachovia and Washington Mutual have all announced huge losses in the past few weeks. The latest addition to this list is E*TRADE. On Friday, E*TRADE disclosed that the losses it anticipated on its mortgage-related assets could be bigger than expected and that the SEC was investigating the firm’s loan and security portfolio. The inevitable analyst downgrades followed, led by Citi’s Prashant Bhatia who said there was a 15% chance the firm could go bankrupt.

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Wealth Management Software Upgrade Helps Coconut Grove Compete in the Big Leagues
November 09, 2007 @ 04:54 PM | By Penny Crosman

To combine big-city investment management services with small-town personal service to its affluent clients, Coconut Grove Bank, Miami, announced this week that it has deployed Sungard's WealthStation and Overlay platforms. WealthStation lets investment advisers provide financial planning and investment products through one system, and Overlay provides access to well-known money managers at large institutions. Together, they "help an organization like ours compete with the Citibanks of the world, with a response time that's much quicker than you find in the large organizations," says Barry Givner, executive vice president and senior trust officer for Coconut Grove Bank's Trust and Wealth Management Department.

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NorthStar Helps Firms Pump Out Proposals to Wealthy Clients
November 01, 2007 @ 05:01 PM | By Penny Crosman

Good but busy times lie ahead for the wealth management industry – it should grow 30% annually over the next few years according to a PriceWaterhouseCoopers report – and the increasing workload is driving wealth and asset managers to streamline their tasks. One time-consuming and difficult chore is preparing investment proposals, says Bob Skea, chief operating officer of Northstar. "The primary reason it's hard is that the work is manual – they're using PowerPoint, they have to find all the client's fundamental information, they have to collect risk profile data, they need to combine all that with an asset allocation modeling tool, which is often in a different system," he says. "Information about different products — fixed income, SMAs, mutual funds and so forth — all come from different sources." And once all the right information is gathered and a proposal is drafted, it may be noncompliant, because there's no record of how the proposal was generated and where the information came from.

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Web 2.0 at TD Ameritrade
October 31, 2007 @ 03:41 PM | By Michael Ellison

Anyone who even remotely follows technology and the Internet has no doubt heard of Web 2.0. While there does not seem to be one accepted, all-encompassing definition, there are a number of features associated with it: AJAX enabled web pages, reviews, blogs, etc. Although it may be hard to define, as Potter Stewart might have said, "I know it when I see it."

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Financial Firms to Spend $28.5 Billion on Wealth Management IT By 2012
October 25, 2007 @ 03:39 PM | By Penny Crosman

Wall Street firms are ready to spend on new wealth management technology, according to a report released today by Datamonitor that predicts spending on wealth management IT in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific will reach $28.5 billion by 2012.

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How Much is that Stock in the Window?
October 11, 2007 @ 09:52 AM | By Michael Ellison

Every few years, we review commissions at the firms that we monitor. Given the recent elimination of the "Merrill Rule", it seemed an opportune time to revisit this issue since the default account that clients are being switched into (unless they specify otherwise) are standard commissionable brokerage account.

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The Silence of Online Chat
October 02, 2007 @ 12:07 PM | By Michael Ellison

As we discussed in our weekly e-Monitor Update, Fidelity this week updated its Live Chat tool with a new design and format. While the changes were strictly aesthetic, the tool clearly remains an important factor in connecting clients and customer service representatives.

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BofA SafePass: One Name, Two Implementations
September 20, 2007 @ 10:32 AM | By Michael Ellison

Bank of America recently launched a couple of security initiatives for both its banking and brokerage clients. To us, one of them seems pretty innovative, the other a potential nuisance.

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Amer-E-Trade: Which Website Would Win?
September 06, 2007 @ 10:18 AM | By Michael Ellison

Welcome back! The summer drew to a close with speculation about a possible merger between E*Trade and TD Ameritrade. While there has been a lot of talk since about the strategic ramifications for both firms, I began to wonder what the impact of a united firm would have on the customer.

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Brokerage Firms Improve on Call Center Hold Times
August 20, 2007 @ 09:19 AM | By Michael Ellison

We recently completed a review of the call centers at leading brokerage firms for our Broker Monitor report and, overall, things have improved in the past three years since the last time we looked at this issue.

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E*TRADE Gets Proactive About E-Mail Fraud
August 14, 2007 @ 11:45 AM | By Michael Ellison

Welcome. My name is Mike Ellison and I am the EVP at Corporate Insight. We’re a firm that looks at the retail experience at a number of brokerage, mutual fund, and banking firms. From time to time, I’m going to be blogging on subjects related to wealth management. Much of what I will be talking about will come from our experiences in maintaining live accounts at the firms we follow in our research. When we uncover something I feel would generate some lively discussion, I’ll post it and hopefully you’ll chime in with your opinions.

To open our discussion, we recently received an email from E*TRADE on identifying and avoiding fraud that I think should generate some dialog.

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