Deals & People April 29, 2009

BofA Loosens Penalty Boxes

Bank of America Corp. is getting rid of one of its pay cuts for some lower producers, according to reports.
Reported by

Merrill Lynch had implemented three penalty boxes this year (see “Merrill, Smith Barney Change Broker Compensation’). The Wall Street Journal reported that it is now removing the one in which brokers with six or more years’ experience bringing in $200,000 to $299,999 in annual production would receive only a 25% payout, rather than 37% on the regular pay scale. Now that pay cut will apply only to brokers with 10 or more years in business.

The remaining penalty categories cut pay for brokers with six or more years’ experience and less than $200,000 in production and those with 10 or more years doing less than $400,000 in production, according to the news report.

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The WSJ noted most firms made their penalty boxes harsher at the beginning of the year in an attempt to weed out long-time lower producers. UBS and Morgan Stanley also brought out tougher penalties this year.

Now the firms are cutting brokers a break. In a similar move, Citigroup Inc.’s Smith Barney is giving its brokers an extra month to increase production levels. It postponed implementation of its penalty guidelines to May 1, The WSJ said.

Products April 29, 2009

AdviceAmerica Updates Financial Planning System

AdviceAmerica, a provider of financial adviser software solutions, announced the next generation of its AdvisorVision product.
Reported by

The new release, AdvisorVision 7, targets both independent advisers as well as institutional firms, includes a new Advice Engine that automatically determines optimal plans and significantly shortens the time advisers spend in the planning process compared to other comprehensive planning applications, according to a news release.

AdvisorVision 7 is tightly integrated and shares data with AdviceAmerica’s new client relationship management (CRM) tool, ClientVision, announced earlier this year (see “AdviceAmerica Introduces CRM for Outlook“). The combination of AdvisorVision 7 and ClientVision integrates financial planning, portfolio construction, and client relationship management into one platform.

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According to the release, key new features of AdvisorVision 7 include:

  • AdviceCenter modeling tools—a modeling tool to construct planning scenarios that may include product solutions such as annuities or reverse mortgages;
  • Automatic Resource Allocator—automatically allocates assets, income streams, and savings to goals based on priorities and industry best practices;
  • Business Management Reports—provides insight into the adviser’s business through management-level reports, including demographic analysis of client book, portfolio rebalancing, revenue opportunities, and application usage;
  • Investment Policy Statement—automatically generates investment policy statements based on client objectives and adviser recommendations.
  • Model Management and Portfolio Construction Tools—gives advisers the ability to define unlimited number of asset allocation models and to associate mutual funds, stocks, or exchange-traded funds (ETFs) for faster investment proposal generation;
  • Datacenter—the enterprise-class SAS 70 certified datacenter ensures high levels of security, automatic backups, failover, and anytime/anywhere access.

AdvisorVision 7 comprehensive planning edition is priced at $1,495 for a single-copy annual subscription. Existing AdvisorVision users can upgrade to AdvisorVision 7 at no charge.

 

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