- Feeling The Beat
Is it time for a heart-to-heart about heart health?
by Wendy Herndon
How often do we stop to appreciate the little things in life that are simply good for the heart, such as laughter or time with friends and family?
read more - Sharpening Your Focus On The Bottom Line
7 Tips to Remain Current and Relevant to Your Clients
by Erin Ardleigh
Agents and brokers that primarily sell life insurance are in a tough spot. Their compensation is at odds with their desire to service their clients. High first-year compensation and low renewals mean that most agents’ business model is to focus on closing sales as quickly as possible.
read more - Advising The Advisors
Like the cobbler’s kids with no shoes, are you tending to your own business planning?
by Ryan Grau and Kevin Stockton
As a financial services professional you undoubtedly do a great job of taking care of your clients – otherwise you wouldn’t be in practice! “Taking care of your clients” means, among other things, helping them to plan for and prepare for the future.
read more - A Conversation With Melinda Mecca
Model Portfolios
by P.E. Kelley
What’s driving interest can be summarized by our own FlexShares ETFs Race to Scalability survey of advisors, which was designed to gauge financial advisors’ attitudes regarding the use of third-party investment management solutions.
read more - True Confessions
Americans admit their relationship with money could be better
by Nela Richardson
Everyone has a litany of reasons to prioritize their finances – save more, spend less, pay down debt, check in on investments more often – but many Americans believe that their relationship with money could be improved.
read more - Advising Newly Minted Gigs, Freelancers & Entrepreneurs
How do you help the client that just quit his job to start his own business?
by Dennis Ho
Today’s gig economy is marked by legions of people starting their own businesses or embarking on freelance careers, freed from corporate shackles (voluntarily or not), but also unprotected by the “company” safety net.
read more - The Critical Need For Critical Illness Coverage
How to help your clients save employees’ lives and livelihoods
by Pam Jenkins
While coronavirus grabs the headlines, thousands of Americans are falling victim to much more deadly illnesses. Cardiovascular disease — heart attacks, strokes and the like — has been the leading killer of people in the U.S. for decades. And more than 600,000 will die from cancer this year.
read more - Planning & The Evolution of Voluntary Benefits
4 Myths that your business clients need to forget
Employers expect a lot from their benefit offerings. They’re essential to attracting job seekers, keeping current employees happy and even preserving productivity. But what if their benefit strategy isn’t keeping pace with employee priorities?
read more - Breaking Up Is Hard To Do…
How divorce can dismantle an otherwise sound retirement plan
by Joseph A. Giannone
Many American couples plan for a comfortable retirement spent pursuing their dreams, but what they don’t anticipate is the enormous financial impact of breaking up. Suddenly families need two homes and two household budgets. Nest eggs, split in two, need to be rebuilt, a task that grow more and more difficult for investors nearing or…
read more - Small Business Is A Big Deal
How to succeed in the small employer market with solutions it needs
by John Stibal
If you want your benefits business to get bigger, maybe you should be thinking smaller — as in small businesses. The fact is nearly all — 99.7% — of U.S. firms with paid employees are small businesses. There are more than 30 million of these potential clients in the U.S.
read more - Creating Value as an Advisor
Navigating your client’s opportunities and risk
by Stuart Jones, CFP®, LUTCF and Rudy Rodriguez
People will always ask a financial advisor, in some form or another, “What is the best way to create and preserve wealth?” This translates to their fear of not having enough money or losing their money over time. It happens to be the number one concern expressed by clients when planning for retirement and their…
read more - Measuring Insurers’s Data Revolution
How to conquer the constraints of legacy IT systems in the insurance sector
by Giuliano Altamura
Consumer interaction with insurance providers is evolving rapidly and this is no less true in the health and life insurance sector. With the insurance industry representing 2.7% of GDP in the US, there is unprecedented pressure on carriers, brokers and agents alike to up their game if they want to stay in the running in…
read more - The Hierarchy Of Income Planning
Patience, and knowing the rules, is often the most successful strategy
by Gregory Fortier, CFA
Quickly google “creating wealth” and you are bombarded by search results of get rich quick schemes, stories about self-made millionaires, and the expected self-help books for sale.
read more
