In all financial advisory sales forces—from stockbrokers to insurance agents to financial advisors and planners—trainee or “novice” producers go through an early career phase of three to four...
Over the last 10 years, if you had simply preserved your wealth, that would be considered achievement. But are these last 10 years unusual? A longer term perspective shows that actual real returns earned by investors...
Exactly 30 years ago, Merrill Lynch launched the first CMA (Cash Management Account). The revolutionary new product combined an investment account, a transaction account (that pays interest on balances through...
In the course of every bear market especially towards the end of the down cycle the securities industry typically decides it has excess capacity in the advisory channel and takes appropriate action. But according to...
In the converging financial services business, reps have a big edge over insurance producers. They make more, have better clients--and are pushed harder by management.
Why are some brokerage offices within the same network consistently profitable while others are consistently unprofitable? It's not, as you might suspect, simply because some offices are better situated to snag...
The CBM Group, a New York-based consultancy, has amassed data about the performance of reps and other sellers of financial products, from which it has created a new way of measuring broker performance. The method...