Equitable Financial Settles SEC Charges for $50M
The market regulator says the firm provided misleading account statements to investors.
The market regulator says the firm provided misleading account statements to investors.
SEC Chair Gary Gensler says he looks forward to working closely with William Birdthistle, an at-times harsh critic of the mutual fund industry, to plan and execute a proactive regulatory agenda.
Supporters of the NAIC annuity transaction suitability model say a fiduciary-only approach to annuity purchase advice would limit consumer choice—a claim its opponents dispute.
The firm is accused of failing to take sufficient steps to monitor customer accounts for further payments to a former adviser—himself accused of substantial wrongdoing—whose registration last lapsed in 2014.
Drawing on their collective decades of experience working inside and outside the DOL, a panel of expert ERISA attorneys convened this week by Faegre Drinker had a lot of timely lessons to share regarding investigations of investment advisers.
Experts outline several ways advisers can ensure they keep the loyalty of their clients.
A former Securities and Exchange Commission litigator who was at the regulator during the transition from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration considers what might happen when Democratic President-elect Joe Biden takes office.
The state’s Insurance Department Rule 82, which may soon be updated to match a suitability framework recently adopted by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, seeks to address conflicts of interest among annuity providers and their proxies.
In the current market environment, safe assets simply do not pay what they once did, but that doesn’t mean annuities have become less attractive. In fact, on a relative basis, annuities currently make a lot of economic sense.
A district court in California has proven to be skeptical of claims suggesting that active management funds are categorically imprudent retirement plan investments; the ruling also defends the use of revenue sharing.
Allegations in the lawsuit against Barnabas Health closely parrot other proposed class action complaints filed in the past year against health care systems by the law firm Capozzi Adler.
Although collective investment trusts hold a fraction of the total assets in retirement plans, with ongoing changes in the broader intermediary landscape, they appear to be poised for continued growth.
Market volatility related to COVID-19 may have heightened the risk of misconduct in various areas that the SEC staff believes merit additional attention from advisers and compliance professionals.
The medical testing company is already facing scrutiny for its use of actively managed investments within its retirement plan; it is now the subject of a broader excessive fee lawsuit.
A registered representative of NEXT Financial Group is accused of manipulating key figures and data used to monitor sales of real estate investment trusts to certain client groups, allegedly rendering the monitoring efforts “meaningless.”
It is common to hear that private equity (PE) has been the best performing asset class in recent years for institutional investors, but a new academic analysis challenges that idea.