Practice

Understanding, selling to women

Although record numbers of women are significant financial contributors to the family finances, their life insurance coverage levels have not kept up accordingly.

By Helena Smeenk Pritchard |December 8, 2011

2 min read

Industry

IIROC guidelines meet Web 2.0

Canadian brokers have received an early gift this year: clarity in the regulations covering their use of social media. IIROC has issues a modernized set of guidelines for registrants’ communications and advertising.

By Staff |December 8, 2011

2 min read

Planning and Advice

Work ON your practice, not just IN it

One of the biggest challenges we see as coaches, is that financial advisors are so busy working IN their business that they don’t have any time to work ON their business. Responding to clients, dealing with staff issues, compliance, paperwork and “putting out fires” consumes most of the day. There is little time left to work on long term planning which will improve your practice, grow revenues and reduce stress.

By April-Lynn Levitt |December 6, 2011

4 min read

Planning and Advice

Making sense of the “alphabet soup”

Canada’s advice credentials landscape, with its diverse mix of designations and organizations that provide them, has been criticized for its complexity. Some industry experts see the “alphabet soup” as a barrier to understanding the role and value of financial advice credentials.

By Dr. Roberta Wilton |December 6, 2011

7 min read

The Place of ETFs in Portfolio Allocation and Diversification

Asset allocation is the strategy investors follow to divide their money between different assets like stocks, bonds and cash. The underlying principle is that prices of different assets move in different(uncorrelated) ways, leading to the idea that diversification protects against risk, which is defined as volatility. But asset allocation says little about the investor’s objectives.

December 5, 2011

13 min read

CE Course: Tax-efficient Investing: principles, pitfalls and applications

Calculate the corporate income out of which the dividend was paid. This is achieved by grossing up the actual amount of the dividend received by the shareholder. The gross-up percentage depends on the rate of tax paid by the company. Shareholders are taxed on the grossed-up amount. This is their notional share of the company’s […]

24 min read

Pension investing with ETFs

DC and RSP benefits are completely a function of contributions and the actual investment result for each employee. Employees are responsible for the outcome, not employers, and the pension amount is unknown until retirement. High costs, poor investment decision-making and lack of scale are documented problems with DC plans, which have generally experienced returns 1% lower than DB plans over time, according to a recent Towers Watson study.

December 1, 2011

10 min read