Deals & People November 30, 2009

Great-West Names Sales Director for Texas, Louisiana

Great-West Retirement Services has appointed Scott Sitzes as regional sales director.

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Sitzes, based in Dallas, joins Carlos Lopez, also regional sales director, in developing 401(k) business throughout the Dallas/Fort Worth, northern Texas, and northern Louisiana markets.

Sitzes joins Great-West Retirement Services from ING, where he served the past 10 years as regional vice president for the north Texas market. Prior to ING, he was a retirement plan consultant at Franklin Templeton Investments for three years.

Products November 30, 2009

SunGard Updates Roth Capabilities on WealthStation

SunGard said it enhanced its Roth IRA analysis capabilities for its Wealth Station wealth management platform in order to accommodate new conversion rules.

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The new functionality can help financial advisers guide their clients in deciding whether to convert their traditional individual retirement accounts (IRA) to Roth IRAs.

Currently, taxpayers with a modified adjusted gross income of less than $100,000 can convert their traditional IRA to a Roth IRA, but the rules going into effect January 1 eliminate that income limit.
 
SunGard said WealthStation provides calculators to give advisers side-by-side comparisons of the impact of immediate taxation upon conversion versus the tax-free accumulation and withdrawals available within a Roth IRA. According to the firm, WealthStation also:

  • Provides two methods for calculating the taxes resulting from an IRA conversion: current tax brackets and user-defined average tax rates;
  • illustrates three IRA alternatives and three time periods to examine different scenarios that take into account the time of conversion, when distributions are to begin, and annual income generated by each alternative;
  • illustrates the cross-over point (i.e. which option produces the largest dollar amount) between keeping a traditional IRA and converting to the Roth IRA based on current and future tax brackets.

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