davidmacchiablog.com

What factors stand in the way of independent advisors and broker-dealers maximizing their success in the retirement income and Rollover IRA markets? It’s a complicated question with multiple answers including the impact of potentially disruptive changes in the regulatory landscape.
One area that I am convinced will really matter is the quality of advisor-client communications. [...]

Today marks the introduction of my new interview series called America’s Elite Financial Advisors. I’m excited about these new series for many reasons but none more so than the opportunity to provide a platform to individuals who possess insights and knowledge that is too often insufficiently appreciated.
The subject of the inaugural interview [...]

Earlier this year I published an essay on the burgeoning effort to recruit annuity agents into the ranks of Registered Investment Advisors. While I haven’t written about this issue since that time I’ve thought about it a great deal. So have a lot of other people including some who see an opportunity to create [...]

Northwestern Mutual’s Chuck Robinson responded with a lengthy comment to my essay on what it will take for a life insurer to become truly admired. Chuck’s response was typically thoughtful and insightful- and correct, in my judgment. I want to thank Chuck for his response as well as highlight it here. Chuck’s [...]

What if you invited three-hundred people to a party and nobody showed?
While I know that press is highly skeptical of the fixed annuity business, even this jaded observer was astonished to hear NAFA Executive Director, Kim O’Brien, report that only 10 of the 300 reporters invited to NAFA’s Annuity Summit even bothered to reply. [...]

In the first three parts of this series I offered a historical context for the present challenges confronting the fixed annuity industry. In this fourth installment I’ll present a vision of tomorrow’s practicing annuity producer: an agent who is more productive, who is selling a more diverse lineup of annuity products, who is financially [...]

“A fiduciary duty is the highest standard of care imposed at either equity or law. A fiduciary is expected to be extremely loyal to the person (the principal) to whom they owe the duty. They must not put their personal interests before the duty, and must not profit from their position as a fiduciary, [...]

In Part Three of this series I will suggest specific actions to repair both the current hostile regulatory climate and the challenging marketing environment which together pose a significant threat to the future success of the fixed annuity industry. Readers should know that my day-to-day work is wound around developing solutions to such problems. [...]

In part one I wrote about the authentic risk to the fixed annuity industry that it may fail to realize its full potential in Boomer retirement security. This would, in my judgment, constitute a tragic result for an industry which, due to its product set and its capacity to assume longevity risk, ought to be [...]

So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, ‘I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!’ [...]

Financial Advisors play an obvious vital role in the distribution of financial services products. They are relied upon by millions of customers for expert guidance, and they are indispensable to countless product providers whose distribution strategy is based upon intermediaries.
I’d like to begin a thread for the expression of financial advisors’ views on issues [...]