Deals & People June 2, 2011

U.S. Retirement Partners Acquires 403(b) Provider

U.S. Retirement Partners (USRP) has acquired USD Insurance and Financial Services, Inc. (USD), a 403(b) provider serving the K-12 education market. 
Reported by

USD was founded in 2000 by Chris Quirarte and is headquartered in Los Angeles. The firm’s eight-person adviser team serves clients in school districts throughout Southern California. USD hopes to expand its adviser base to accommodate the current market size, the announcement said.

“Joining USRP will enable us to grow the business at a much faster rate,” said Chris Quirarte, president of USD.  “They have a strong suite of tools that will help us recruit, select and train new advisers quickly.  Because the Southern California opportunity is so large, we are looking at doubling our number of advisers in the next two years.”

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Diversions June 2, 2011

In Search of the Good Life

The Better Life Initiative was launched this week, which aims to measure aspects of success in a society besides its gross domestic product.   
Reported by

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is a coalition of 34 countries whose mission is to provide “a forum in which leaders and policy makers can work together to share experiences and seek solutions to common problems, and produces high-quality internationally comparable statistics used to understand what drives economic, social, and environmental change.”

One way it is working towards this mission is to identify the best way to measure the progress of societies–“moving beyond GDP and examining the areas that impact everyday people’s lives.” With this goal in mind, the OECD developed the Better Life Initiative.

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The Better Life Initiative includes an interactive tool that allows users to see how countries were ranked by its own citizens according to 11 criteria: housing, income, jobs, community, education, environment, governance, health, life satisfaction, safety, and work-life balance. The ten countries with the best results for the work-life balance were:

10. France

9. Portugal

8. Germany

7. Sweden

6. Switzerland

5. Belgium

4. Findland

3. Netherlands

2. Norway

1. Denmark

To see how the United States ranked, and to customize the weight with which each criteria is given, visit http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/. 

  

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