Phoenix Launches Program For Advisors To Target Businesses
The Phoenix Companies Inc. has introduced Business Owner Strategies, a program supporting financial advisors who want to work with closely held and family-owned businesses.
The Phoenix program approaches the business owner market somewhat differently than others in the industry, focusing on the eventual transfer of the business. This addresses the challenge many advisors face of shifting an owner‚s attention from day-to-day operations to the transition of their business after they retire, become disabled or die.
The program includes a "decision grid" to help business owners determine whether they plan to keep or sell their company in the future. The program then offers advisors step-by-step instruction on how to use life insurance in one or more of the five following strategies: Continuation Planning, Family Succession Planning, Retirement Planning, Estate Planning and Nonqualified Executive Benefit Planning. The program also walks advisors and business owners through the main elements of each strategy, including business valuation, cross-purchase plans, wills and trusts, deferred compensation and key-person protection.
Visit www.PhoenixWealthMan-agement.com for more information on Hartford, Conn.-based Phoenix.

S&P‚s CUSIP Service Bureau Launches New Delivery Service
Standard & Poor‚s CUSIP Service has launched "New Issues On the Web" (S&P NOW) to deliver CUSIP identifiers for competitive and negotiated municipal bond deals to fixed-income and equity market participants every 15 minutes.
S&P NOW supports equities, municipal and corporate bonds as well as subsets of these instruments, including IPOs.
For additional information visit www.cusip.com or call 212-438-4500.

Jefferson National Offers Flat Insurance Fee For Annuities
Inviva‚s Jefferson National Life Insurance Co., with offices in New York and Louisville, Ky., has launched Monument Advisor, which the company says is the only variable annuity to charge a flat insurance fee of $20 per month, no matter how much clients invest.
Monument Advisor pays no commission and has no product surrender charge, and gives consumers a selection of underlying funds with more than 110 variable investment options.
To learn more, please visit www.jeffnat.com.

The Hartford And Protective Offering Term Life Quotes Online
The Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. and Protective Life Corporation have formed Life Alliance LLC, a new online joint venture to help financial professionals meet their customers‚ term life insurance needs.
Life Alliance LLC has created the Insurance Online NetworkTM (ION), a Web-based platform designed to make it easier and quicker for financial professionals to provide their clients with quotes on term life insurance from multiple carriers, from the convenience of their own desktops.
ION will provide quotes on policies from Hartford Life and Annuity Insurance Company and from Protective.

Pershing Providing Access To Advent‚s Portfolio Tools
Pershing LLC‚s independent registered investment advisor customers (RIAs) and RIAs affiliated with the firm‚s introducing broker-dealer customers can access Advent Back Office Service technology for portfolio accounting and performance reporting, under a new a license and distribution agreement.
RIAs will have access to a solution that enables them to leverage Advent‚s Axys portfolio accounting and reporting software, while outsourcing the data management and information delivery functions to Pershing, enabling them to receive daily reconciliation services and full Axys functionality via the Internet.

John Hancock Launches Variable Universal Life Insurance Product
John Hancock has unveiled Performance Survivorship Variable Universal Life (SVUL), a new second-to-die variable universal life insurance product for clients seeking survivorship insurance with growth potential to meet their wealth transfer or business planning needs.
SVUL combines the latest in design flexibility with strong cash accumulation both in short-pay scenarios, where clients pay premiums for a limited period, and when clients want to highly fund their policy to maximize cash accumulation. In highly funded cases, Performance SVUL offers some of the most competitive cash accumulations in the industry, the company says.