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Sales of annuities fell 7% year over year in the second quarter, dragged down by fixed annuities even as variable annuities rose 11%, according to data from Limra.

Wealth management firms have some retirement planning of their own to do: Their advisers' average age is just shy of 49 and 14% of advisers are over 60.

Financial advisers spend 23 hours a week on the Internet visiting industry and fund manager websites as well as social networking, a survey by kasina found.

The securities industry added almost 7,000 jobs in June, and revisions to previous months' figures mean there were 4,000 more positions created than had been reported at the time, according to BrokerHunter.com's latest employment trends report.

Bank representatives' productivity declined in May, according to the latest Bank Insurance and Securities Association monthly sales productivity benchmark.

Affluent investors ended the first half of the year on a sour note, their confidence slipping seven points in June, to minus-12 on Spectrem Group's Affluent Investor Confidence Index, but advisers say that falling confidence presents an opportunity rather than an obstacle.

Fifth Third Securities' investment program was primarily platform-driven. Now advisers lead the program, creating a product diversity that has allowed it to thrive.

Fidelity Investments has launched a program for registered investment advisers to help maximize their referral flow.

While the House version pushed for the Securities and Exchange Commission to create a fiduciary standard, the Senate preferred instead to have the SEC study differences between its fiduciary standard and the suitability standard many brokers are held to by Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, without giving the SEC the power to do anything about it.

Investors seem less worried than Congress when it comes to the opacity of management fees, according to Spectrem Group's latest "Retirement Market Insights" report.

Banks expect hybrid annuities with long-term-care riders to be the next hot product on brokerage platforms, as soon as product providers ramp up their offerings in this area, a Kehrer-Limra executive said.

LPL Financial may be in its quiet period, but industry observers are happy to talk about the broader effects of the Boston financial services company's coming initial public offering.

Hedge funds lost money in May but outperformed the traditional equity-market benchmarks, the Hennessee Group said on Tuesday.

As many as 11,000 wire house advisers may be on the move, according to a report by Aite Group in Boston. Job satisfaction is a problem. While 15% of wire house advisers are very satisfied with their firm and have no intention of leaving, most are not so fired up about their employers. In fact, 20% say they're ready to break from their firm within the next two years. …

Bank sales of annuities may have started out the year on the wrong foot — January was down 24% from an already weak December — but they have fought back, rising 15% in February and by 28% in March, according to the Kehrer-Jackson Monthly Bank Annuity Sales Survey.

Financial planners are reporting that 19% of the calls they got in the first quarter were about retirement planning, up from 13% in the fourth quarter, according to a report by Financial Finesse, a trends researcher in Manhattan Beach, Calif. The firm analyzed 1,340 phone and e-mail queries sent to its 10 financial consultants.

Life insurance sales grew 10% in the first quarter from a year earlier, according to the latest figures from Limra, the life insurance trade group in Windsor, Conn.

Banks' fixed annuity sales fell 16% in the fourth quarter from the previous quarter and 43% year over year, according to Beacon Research's Fixed Annuity Premium Study. That followed a 13% drop from the second to the third quarter.

Bank of America Corp.'s U.S. Trust unit is embarking on a new advertising campaign aimed at ultra-high-net-worth investors.

About 70% of working people have given up on the idea of retirement, according to the 2010 Employee Benefits Research Institute Retirement Confidence Survey, up from 63% in 2008.