Featured Articles

• Make your trust department more profitable

  The merger between Indianapolis-based Union Federal Bank and Sky Bank in Bowling Green, Ohio, is ...

• Solutions to the crisis

  What new and creative retirement income products are a hit in the bank channel? Will it be annui...

• Win at one-on-one

  Face time with a prospect is your most valuable time, so use it wisely. Many bank advisors excel ...

Columns

Good Listening

Build your business through rejection
I can think of no other profession that's as closely associated with rejection as the transaction-based bank business.

Editor's Letter

Surthriving in the down market
The cutesy term we heard so often during the tech implosion is back, with twice the resonance.

Good Selling

Recovery marketing: Three tips for increased business
The financial services business is cyclical, but dramatic volatility tests both investors and their advisors. As you enter a new year your strategy and business planning provides you with daily, weekly and monthly execution points that ensure your success. Developing key marketing concepts provides the foundation necessary to maximize your business growth. Follow these three steps to build your marketing plan in down markets.

Best Practices

Earn your fair share
Play a game with me; it's one your clients are already playing. I have $10. We're going to split it between us and I get to decide how. You get to decide whether to accept my offer, but you cannot make any adjustments. If you accept, we split the money as I suggested. If you decline, no one gets to keep any money.

Banking on Tech

Your competition has fewer clients, but more assets
What if I told you there were financial advisors who work with a lot fewer clients than you, yet they manage twice as many assets and earn three times more money? You might assume these advisors have a special advantage you do not. In most cases they don't. It's simply the time they spend developing a well thought-out and comprehensive plan for clients. Let's face it, boilerplate plans no longer cut it.

Compliance

Who's risking your business? (Part III)
Part three of our series "Who's risking your business?" focuses on the critical considerations in cross-channel marketing. It will discuss the controls that a firm with multiple business lines must establish in order to ensure that sales, marketing and compliance are aware of which division is launching a particular product or service.

The Close

The best opportunity ever
I spoke at a convention in 2001, during the last bear market. I asked my audience for their take on what we were witnessing. A woman stood up and said, "For building client relationships, we're in the greatest bull market in history.

Departments

News & Insight

Insurance sector to Fed - back off
Congress would be best served to look to the state-regulated AIG insurance sectors that held strong rather than to the federally regulated divisions that led to our present crisis on Wall Street. We at NCOIL plan to encourage use of the states' effective mitigation efforts and discourage adding more bureaucracy to a federal system that in large part served as a breeding ground that produced the current crisis." -- National Conference of Insurance Regulators President Brian Patrick Kennedy (D-Dist. 38, Hopkinton, Westerly)

'08 fixed annuities sales stomp 2007's
Third quarter 2008 fixed annuities skyrocketed 80 percent over third quarter 2007 earnings. A Beacon Research study of 51 insurance companies sees even more promising numbers in early 2009.

Small business owners stay with banks
Relationships between small business owners and their banks are holding strong, according to J.D. Power and Associates 2008 Small Business Banking Satisfaction study.

Variable annuities take a hit
Little surprise, variable annuities tumbled toward the end of 2008.

Rural banks withstand crisis
Rural economies are not immune to the nation's faltering financial system, but banks in these areas say they are healthy.

Bank legislation - what's to come?
As state legislative sessions begin, Kathy Donovan, manager of Government Relations for Wolters Kluwer Financial Services says insurers will see variations of the NAIC model law and STOLI restrictions, as well as other consumer-focused regulations, introduced. The issue of state regulation versus federal regulation, and the potential for discrepancies between the two, will also be in focus in the banking industry in coming months. "There continues to be a growing interest in protecting consumers -- particularly the senior population," Donovan says.

Insurance Co.'s and mutual fund industry battle for retirement income assets
Insurance companies are facing serious competition from the mutual fund industry in serving the retirement needs of baby boomers.