College Improves CFP Courses With Practice Exams
The American College will begin providing CD-ROM discs of practice exam questions to all students enrolled in the five required courses for the college‚s CFP education curriculum.
The five required courses also form the foundation of the Chartered Financial Consultant (ChFC) designation and can also be taken by students working toward their Chartered Life Underwriter (CLU) designation.
"Students asked us for more practice exam and review questions because they wanted additional help in understanding financial service concepts and additional help in preparing for their final exams," says Dr. Samuel H. Weese, CLU, CPCU, president and CEO of the college.
The college won‚t charge for the discs, which will be included in the fulfillment packages sent to students at the beginning of each course. The first course to include the exam questions is "Insurance and Financial Planning."
For more information, visit www.amercoll.edu.
Fidelity Expands Program
Fidelity Investments of Boston has expanded its independent practice management and business-building resources available to registered investment advisors and correspondent broker-dealers.
The 11 new business alliances available through Fidelity‚s PracticeAdvantage program include: AccuDraft, AdvisorSites, Buenfu-turo, The Cambridge Alliance, The Collaborative for Business Development, HNW Inc., Leading Market Technologies, LiveWorld Inc., Michele Perkins & Associates, National Compliance Services and Shipgolf.com.
As part of PracticeAdvantage, each company will offer Fidelity clients access to discounts or preferred rates on select products or services. For more information about Fidelity Invest-ments, visit www.fidelity.com.
Funds Added To SMA Platform
Neuberger Berman‚s all-cap core and small-cap core portfolios have been added to ACCESS, UBS PaineWebber‚s separately managed account (SMA) platform.
New York-based Neuberger Berman also announced it renamed its managed accounts practice the Managed Account Group to more closely reflect the group‚s operations. The Managed Account Group formerly was known as the Consultant Services Group.
Established in 1988, Neuberger‚s Managed Account Group has grown into one of the investment industry‚s leading SMA products based on assets under management. According to Cerulli Associates, during the fourth quarter of 2002 alone, Neuberger Berman increased its SMA assets 14.5% to $5.7 billion, ranking it among the largest SMA investment managers.
For more information, visit www.nb.com.
SMA Program Enhanced
Oberon Financial Technology of Sunnyvale, Calif., has introduced multi-asset class portfolios in its separate account and mutual fund wrap program. Fifteen portfolios use specialized asset-class managers with an overlay manager to direct an asset-allocated portfolio of equities within a single account. The account minimum is $100,000. For more information, visit www.oberonft.com.
Principal-Protected Funds
Black Diamond Asset Management of Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., has launched a family of indexed principal-protected mutual funds. All Black Diamond funds seek to meet or exceed the performance of their benchmark index over the seven-year investment period through active management of index options, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and ETF options.
Day-to-day investment activity will be managed by Broadmark Asset Management, a New York-based registered investment advisor. All the funds offer 100% principal protection at maturity. For a prospectus, e-mail [email protected] or call (954) 617-1700, ext. 401.
Firm Recognized
Forrester Research Inc. has rated ByAllAccounts Inc. of Boston first in account aggregation in its TechStrat-egy Report, "Aggregation: Who‚s Best for Wealth Management." Forrester analyzed six aggregation vendors utilizing criteria that included data gathering, quality and flexible delivery. Also, ByAllAccounts has added five new financial advisory firm clients. Among them are Highmount Capital, Friedman & Associates and Wade Financial.