Wealth management

Insurance companies and investment firms offering retirement services to large and small employers are learning that attention to detail, an improved communication with the plan sponsors and, indirectly, plan participants can dramatically improve their customer retention and satisfaction rates.

Our nation's retirement system is a hot topic. In addition to frequent surveys finding that Americans are ill-prepared and worried about retirement, there are statehouse disputes about whether public pensions are too fat.

“How can you do that to your kids?” That’s the question Sacramento’s Sarah Cook hears all the time. And rather than making her feel embarrassed or guilty, she revels in the scorn.

New research from LIMRA finds that total individual annuity sales rose 6% during the fourth quarter of 2010 as compared to the same period last year to reach $57.6 billion.

Assets in 529 college savings plans have grown 56% in the past 24 months, beating industry estimates by 30%, according research by Financial Research Corp.

Thirty-four percent of the 3,171 adults that The Harris Poll surveyed in February expect the economy to improve in the coming year, 42% expect it to stay the same and 25% think it could get worse.

Women are not only becoming more responsible for the finances in their own homes, but they are passing on their knowledge to their own parents.

Only 10% of Americans with $5 million to $25 million in investable assets described themselves as “very wealthy” in a recent survey by Spectrem Group, and 28% considered their wealth “moderate.”

A MassMutual Retirement released a study that found women put their retirement assets in target-date options twice as often as risk-based options in the fourth quarter of 2010, while men were just as likely to use a target-date fund as they were a risk-based one.

M&T Bank recently released the results of a study that found that close to 80% of those who took part in a phone survey have little-to-no debt or are "comfortable" with their debt level.

Sales of annuities through banks ended the year with a promising lift, specifically for variable business.

Employees as a whole made significant improvements to their finances in 2010, despite a tepid economic recovery and sluggish rebound of job and real estate markets, according to a new study.

About 40 years ago, they were told to cut their hair and find a real job. Today, this same massive segment of the American population, better known as baby boomers, is getting another ultimatum: stop spending so much money and work even longer at that real job.

Many people who retired in 2000 thought they were in great shape: over the last 20 years, stocks returned 17.8% on average.

Nearly 875,000 employees increased their contributions to 401k plans in 2010, a 21% increase over 2009’s level of 721,000 employees, according to BofA/Merrill Lynch’s Retirement & Benefit Plan Services report.

This afternoon, the Senate HELP Committee (Health, Education, Labor and Pensions) will meet to discuss the retirement security crisis — specifically, how to help Americans save more for retirement and make better saving decisions.

Contributions to 401(k) plans increased in the last year, Principal Financial found in a survey last fall of 1,159 employees and 529 retirees.

As companies act to attract and retain good employees, many are choosing to offer financial planning as one of the perks of employment. But in the words of Albert Einstein and Alexander Pope, a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

Assets held in domestic exchange-traded funds reached a record $995 billion at the end of last year.

Gen-Y Americans showed notable caution regarding their personal finances, according to the Western Union Payments Money Mindset survey.