Deals & People September 22, 2010

Larsen Joins Transamerica Southern Region

Transamerica Retirement Services has hired Andrew Larsen as regional vice president in the company’s Southern Region.
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A news release said he will be responsible for all sales activities and distribution in Alabama, the Florida Panhandle, and central and eastern Tennessee.  Larsen will be based in Nashville and will report to Steven Dunlap, Transamerica’s divisional vice president for the Southern Region.  

Larsen has more than eight years of experience specializing in retirement plans and more than 14 years of sales experience.  Most recently, Larsen served as a regional vice president for Nationwide Financial where he was responsible for building relationships with advisers and generating qualified plans sales through bank, wirehouse, and independent channels in Iowa and Nebraska.

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Larsen received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Marketing from the University of Northern Iowa.  

Products September 22, 2010

Morningstar Launches Adviser Report Writing Product

Morningstar has launched a new tool to help independent financial advisers create their own custom investment performance reports.  
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A news release said Morningstar Office Report Studio is a new feature within Morningstar Office that allows advisers to create their own custom performance reports, either as a single, personalized report for an individual client or as a report template for use across their entire practice.

The new tool offers the ability to build a new report from scratch or to edit one of Morningstar’s pre-designed templates. Advisers have access to hundreds of Morningstar investment data points, charts, and graphs, as well as pre-built data tables to highlight performance, risk, return, investment style, and other important concepts to their clients, the news release said.

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A drag-and-drop interface allows advisers to select and position key charts and data tables on the report layout, and report elements resize automatically to the adviser’s specifications when they are placed on the template. Morningstar Office Report Studio can also incorporate an advisory firm’s logo, outside images and charts, custom disclosure information, corporate color palette, and fonts to create materials that align with the firm’s identity and branding, Morningstar said.

Advisers can save all reports and templates as Adobe PDF documents or Microsoft PowerPoint(R) files.

More information is at http://global.morningstar.com/reportstudio. 

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