Wealth management

Bank of America Corp. took a risk when it recently launched Merrill Edge, an online, call-center and branch-based brokerage poised to compete with discount brokers, but it said that gamble is paying off.

Fiserv Inc. said it is improving its wealth management offerings through a partnership with LifeYield LLC.

Bank of New York Mellon announced Monday that it named Mitchell Harris president of its investment management division.

Ninety percent of advisers concede they are not doing enough to market and publicize their practice, a survey found.

Kris Jenner is quick to point out that you don't have to be a doctor to successfully manage a mutual fund that invests in the medical industry.

Person-to-person payment is expected to be one of the big next deployments for mobile financial services, and ING Direct is an early adopter of the latest incarnation of the technology, becoming the first major financial institution to enable U.S. customers with iPhones to use them to send money to one another.

Fiserv Inc. is rolling out investment account management services that it says will allow its clients' retail investors to bring in third-party accounts from other management services and expand the ability to view their overall performance.

Most families are a far cry from the kind of brood epitomized on the 1950s television sitcom "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet." Families and their estate plans are more diverse now, and trusts play a main role.

Angel investors are getting organized, and that is attracting some ultra-wealthy families eager for hands-on alternatives to traditional investments.

U.S. senators formally referred to the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission an investigative report that found that Goldman Sachs Group Inc. misled clients about mortgage-linked securities.

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A 20-year veteran of State Street, CEO Jay Hooley concluded that the custodial bank's business model did not have to fundamentally change — it just had to keep up with investors whose strategies did.

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Independent brokers such as Phillips and Robinson are feeling spied on, muzzled and flat-out disrespected as brokerages struggle to keep regulators happy and brands intact. That said, broker-dealers may be have a point; a clutch of them have been sued or fined into oblivion for selling products that were, at best, too risky for their buyers.

A decade of pushing to make disclosures by registered investment advisers more user-friendly may now be paying off, although, as with similar reforms in the past, investors will need to make time to read them.

What to do with a corporate pension can be one of the biggest financial decisions people make when they retire. For advisers like Mark Atherton, it is also one of the trickiest because no two situations are alike.

Despite the steady, upward trajectory of the stock market and declining unemployment figures in most states, middle-class Americans report they're less secure about their personal finances now than they've been more than two years, according to the results of a survey from First Command Financial Services.

Letting the numbers speak for themselves, Bank of America has sent a message to anyone still disgruntled over its $29.1 billion purchase of Merrill Lynch. And that message is: "I told you so."

Bank of America Corp.'s Merrill Lynch named John Thiel as the new head of U.S. Wealth Management, one of the top positions in the bank's Global Wealth & Investment Management group, according to an internal memo.

Carlyle Group, the buyout firm that on Wednesday unveiled another major investment in the banking sector, distributed more than $6.4 billion to investors in the first quarter.