Wealth management

I come from a family of pretty good athletes. Well, let me amend that. Of the four males in the household, my youngest brother was terrible -- always falling over his feet, my middle brother and I were pretty decent athletes, having played in high school and college. My father was a duffer and even though he had the most expensive golf clubs on the market, his handicap practically equaled the national debt.

A year after the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 became law, government statistics show that the number of bankruptcy filings nationwide dropped nearly 70 percent last year.The total number of filings last year dropped to 618,000, down from a record of 2.1 million in 2005, when people were rushing to file before the new laws were enacted, according to statistics from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. The American Bankruptcy Institute said that the 2006 number was the lowest level since 1988.

Your clients probably want to leave as much as possible to their heirs. However, if they don't take minimum distributions from their Individual Retirement Accounts after they reach 70-1/2, the government could take a substantial amount of those assets.The Internal Revenue Service can charge an excise tax of up to 50 percent if clients don't take the required minimum distribution from their IRA accounts or qualified retirement plans by April 1 of the year after the year they turn 70-1/2.

USE OF ALTERNATIVE INVESTMENTS TO INCREASE AHEAD OF BOOMERSRegistered investment advisors intend to ratchet up their use of alternative investments such as hedge funds, real estate, commodities and currencies in the next five years, according to a national survey released by Rydex AdvisorBenchmarking.

Insurance and financial services conglomerate New York Life Insurance Co. is donating $2 million to establish the New York Life Center for Retirement Income at Bryn Mawr, Pa.-based financial educator The American College.The company said that the purpose of the endowment was to help address the demand for sound retirement income solutions among retired Americans. The gift to the nonprofit educator of insurance and financial professionals will provide permanent support for programming and research.

I just came back from a cruise that included a stop at George Town, Grand Cayman. Many people on the ship joked that this was an intended, featured port of call as they wanted to check up on their shekels in the island’s banks. Let me sort this out for you.

Nearly half of all non-retired adult Americans still expect to retire with a pension, according to a new poll conducted for the American Institute of CPAs.

The National Association of Black Accountants Inc. and the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants recently announced the launch of Money $ense.The program contains five curriculum modules designed to reverse the poor financial forecasts being made about individuals and families within the African-American community. The five modules focus on key financial areas such as credit and debt management, budgeting, financial planning, investing and saving.

There is a greater push for transparency, both in terms of financial reporting and in regard to regulatory actions, but I wonder how successful this push will ultimately be. It is the regulatory bodies that will have to be the driving force, along with institutional investors. A recent action indicated to me that one particular regulatory body seems to have little concern for transparency. It was reported at www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070405/BUSINESS/704050480 that Conseco Life Insurance Co. has been fined $750,000 by Iowa regulators. The article reports that state kept secret exactly what triggered the penalty. This got me curious, as the fine was described as ”one of the Iowa Insurance Division's largest such penalties,” so I tracked down the order.

If I had a dollar for every time I heard the expression that you need to make sure your money outlives you, I would probably be retired 15 times over by now. It seems that this is the big signpost in front of all clients’ eyes.

In a decidedly non-scientific survey, Money Management International found that tax time can be very different for consumers born under different sun signs.For example, the MMI survey found that Libras expecting a refund plan to receive an average refund of $2,200, while Aries are expecting a significant $800 less.

Industry data projects that by 2010, nearly half of all CPA firms will, to some degree, be providers of financial services to affluent clients.This represents a dramatic leap from the situation today, when only 19.4 percent of CPA firms are currently providing financial services to this client base. The opportunity is there, but to tap into it, firms must expand their capabilities and services, which increasingly involves building alliances with insurance and benefit companies.

Retirement is the No. 1 personal financial planning concern, regardless of age, according to an informal survey taken by the American Institute of CPAs at its Personal Financial Planning Conference.The AICPA said that it was a surprised to see that retirement planning is a major concern for career builders - classified as those between the ages of 25 and 34 - who also have the more immediate pressures of education, home buying and debt management following close behind.

Broker/dealer H.D. Vest has teamed with Cannon Financial Institute, a provider of financial services consulting, to provide practice management training to its top 600 advisors. The training sessions are scheduled to take place in Arizona and Texas in May, and the program has been named "Elite Academy." Participants will begin with a single concentrated workshop on "creating a consistent client experience."

Morningstar Investment Services, a registered investment advisor and subsidiary of financial information concern Morningstar Inc., has launched Morningstar Managed Portfolios Select Stock Baskets, a managed account service consisting of customized stock portfolios based on Morningstar indexes and independent equity research.The Morningstar Indexes form the basis of each stock basket's investment composition, and the stock basket is subsequently tailored to suit an investor's specific parameters, including sector and industry exposure, stock restrictions, existing holdings, and personal tax situation. MIS then selects stocks for the portfolio using Morningstar data and research on the stocks within the index.

A federal appeals court ruled that the Securities and Exchange Commission overstepped its authority in updating rules governing brokers who offer financial advice.

I was raised in a medical family, meaning I was exposed to doctors and hospitals from the get go. It was a nice, comfortable atmosphere where none of the three sons was ever concerned about money. My mother never worked and my father did quite well except for stock investments.But in all those years living at home, I wouldn’t think of asking my father how much money he had or what kind of estate he was considering leaving to us kids, or even my mother. It just wasn’t the topic of any dinnertime conversation and my mother certainly never raised it. Actually, she was smart enough to take a portion of her weekly allowance and put it aside in stocks and bonds, and did quite well. Talk about a self-made woman. Without any formal education, she was just street smart about making sure she had her own protection in the event my father’s latest foray in investments went awry. It did once when he was a principal investor in Tucker automobiles but that’s a story for another time.

I seldom veer off the subject of accounting in this space unless circumstances or events encourage me to do otherwise.

The Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards Inc. has released a second exposure draft of proposed changes to its, “Standards of Professional Conduct.”

It has come to my attention that the advisor-client relationship may be sinking and that you need to do something about it.My friends at SEI, a leading global provider of outsourced asset management, investment processing, and investment operations solutions, has done us all a big favor with its latest survey of some 100 clients of the SEI Advisor Network because it reveals that 28 percent of advisors attribute client relationship failures to a lack of understanding. The result is that advisors need to communicate more clearly to avoid straining or losing clients.