Morgan Stanley is selling Gradifi Solutions, a student loan benefits provider, to workplace savings fintech Vestwell. ETrade Financial acquired Gradifi from First Republic Bank for $30 million in 2019, less than three months before Morgan Stanley bought ETrade for $13 billion. Terms of the transaction to Vestwell were not disclosed,...
Employers competing to fill empty positions with the most talented candidates at a time of historically low unemployment are turning to a once overlooked benefit: the 401(k) match. Workers value that perk more than cash, so much so that a dollar in 401(k) contributions is twice as effective at luring...
Retirement reality is really starting to bite Gen X. A recent survey from Prudential Financial revealed that America’s 65 million Generation Xers — those Americans born between 1965 and 1980 — are facing a slew of financial challenges just as they enter their final working years. Most notably, more than...
Paris-headquartered BNP Paribas has announced that it is under scrutiny by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission for its personnel’s noncompliant use of communication tools, violating archiving protocols. Although BNP Paribas reported better-than-expected figures for Q2, and would have beaten last year’s profit numbers without...
Faith is a powerful thing but when people are persuaded to believe in too-good-to-be-true investments, it can also be costly. The SEC has charged Brent Seaman of Naples, Florida, with fraudulently raising around $35 million from 60 investors, including fellow members of his church, in what he said were “safe”...
An SEC proposal to eliminate conflicts of interest in financial advisors’ use of technology that predicts investor behavior is raising concerns about how it will work with Regulation Best Interest. A split Securities and Exchange Commission voted 3-2 Wednesday to release a proposal for public comment that would require brokerages...
With Congress seeking to tamp down on ESG and the first 401(k) lawsuit over ESG having been filed, some employers are scared about the idea of including sustainable investment options in their retirement plans. More than 70% of retirement plan consultants and aggregators say that political uncertainty is a leading...
InvestmentNews columnist Ed Slott got a lot of people thinking about Roth IRA and Roth 401(k) strategies this week — and whether traditional tax-deferred saving should be anyone’s go-to in the current tax environment. In his column Monday, Slott urged advisors to be “sounding the alarm” about growing pretax balances...
President Joe Biden has nominated former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley as the next commissioner of the Social Security Administration. The agency is responsible for distributing Social Security to more than 70 million beneficiaries and commands a $1 trillion budget, according to Reuters, which reported O’Malley’s selection Wednesday. It has been...
Brokers and investment advisors would have to remediate conflicts of interest related to interactions with investors conducted through artificial intelligence, predictive analytics and similar technology under a proposal released Wednesday by the SEC. By a 3-2 vote, the Securities and Exchange Commission approved releasing a 243-page proposal for public comment...