Wealth management

RBC Wealth Management would like to see its 2,000-plus U.S. brokers raise their individual annual production to US$1 million, a target the head of its wealth unit sees as reachable in five years.

Most new financial advisers are encouraged to find a niche and develop expertise in handling a certain type of client. That expertise should lead to more clients and an efficient, prosperous practice.

An arbitration panel has ruled that certain comments regarding a broker's termination from Banc of America Investment Services Inc. in 2009 be expunged from his record.

Citizens Financial Group Inc. is taking a page from Hollywood in its test of in-branch videoconferencing. But the movie-star touch isn't the high-definition video screens — it's the pens used to sign important documents.

The accounts, which go by the acronym UMA, combine a mix of mutual funds, exchange-traded funds and another vehicle called a separately managed account, which typically holds a portfolio of individual stocks and bonds selected by a professional money manager.

When Kathy Stepp started her fee-only practice in 1992, the certified financial planner and certified public accountant saw her Overland Park, Kan., practice growing into something bigger than a one-woman shop. Exactly how, she wasn't sure.

U.S. insurers' sales of variable annuities rose 24% in the first quarter, led by policies that promise lifetime income and protect against market drops, at a time when investors are still wary of stocks.

The compliance officer at Wunderlich Securities Inc. was well familiar with the rules for running a brokerage. That wasn't enough, however, to keep him and his firm out of serious regulatory trouble.

Jeffrey Gundlach looks set to follow another bond fund star, Bill Gross, into the business of actively managed exchange-traded funds.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the fifth-biggest U.S. bank by assets, was subpoenaed by the Manhattan District Attorney's office for information on the company's activities leading into the credit crisis, two people familiar with the matter said.

A former Wachovia Bank manager in Virginia who admitted to stealing $14.1 million from bank clients through a bogus wealth management scheme was sentenced to seven years in prison.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. will not face criminal prosecution tied to sales of mortgage-linked securities as such a move could threaten the U.S. financial system, according to Brad Hintz, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co.

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Emigrant offers art- and antique-related services that most banks do not. "It's not cost-effective for many of the big banks to invest in the expertise and infrastructure to offer art advisory services or to underwrite loans," says Andy Augenblick, the president of Emigrant Bank Fine Art Finance.

Years after they were first launched, in-plan annuities, meant to help retirement-plan participants turn their nest eggs into regular income streams, remain fairly rare.

Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. is proposing a wide-ranging settlement of its outstanding derivatives trades with more than a dozen of its largest counterparties, including some of the biggest banks.

HighTower Advisors of Chicago has hired a three-member team of Morgan Stanley Smith Barney veterans to its Palm Desert, Calif., office.

The State Street Investor Confidence Index rose 6.8 points in May, to 104.1, its highest reading since December. The increase was led by North American investors, whose confidence rose 7.7 points, to 106.3, from April.

Big brokerage firms are inching into social media, but the industry is still miles away from making full use of all that Facebook, Twitter and other such sites have to offer.

Wells Fargo & Co., a giant bank that already runs the fifth-largest insurance broker in the world by revenue, is seeking to double that revenue in the next decade.