Cetera Takes Marketing Central All-In-One Platform Live

Cetera Financial Group has gone live with its latest product offering, MarketingCentral, a new all-in-one marketing platform available to its network of financial advice professionals.

Built exclusively for financial advisors, MarketingCentral brings together multi-touch e-mail campaigns, social media, print, presentations and events marketing tools into one centralized easy-to-use platform. In addition, Cetera advisors have access to a content library that includes videos, infographics, articles, quizzes, calculators and more.

Built in collaboration with FMG Suite, MarketingCentral is the latest offering in Cetera’s portfolio of programs and tools. It offers advisors innovative segmentation, sales and marketing strategies to help them build brand strength and drive business growth.

Headquartered in El Segundo, Calif., Cetera Financial Group serves affiliates making up the second-largest family of independent broker-dealers in the United States.

LGBTQ Loyalty Holdings Launches LGBTQ100 ESG Index

LGBTQ Loyalty Holdings Inc., a financial methodology and media company with offices in West Hollywood, Calif., and Wilton Manors, Fla., has officially launched the LGBTQ100 ESG Index.

This environmental, social and governance index is the first ever that references LGBTQ community survey data in the methodology for a benchmark listing of the nation’s highest financially performing companies.

The index comprises 100 LGBTQ equality-driven names from the nation’s top 500 publicly traded companies, as determined by LGBTQ Loyalty Holdings’ surveys. It is available on NYSE, Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters and will be reconstituted annually.

Nuveen Expands Retirement Product Suite

Nuveen, a New York-based global investment manager, has expanded its retirement product suite with the addition of a target date collective investment trust series.

The Nuveen TIAA Lifecycle Blend CIT series, managed by Nuveen’s mixed assets portfolio management team, will consist of 12 funds that include 11 target-date funds at five-year intervals for retirement dates 2010 through 2060, and a retirement income fund for those already in retirement.

SEI Trust Company is the trustee for the new CITs and maintains ultimate fiduciary authority over the management of and investments made in the CIT series, with Nuveen as advisor.

The series contains a blend of active and passive holdings for plan sponsors seeking expertise and experience in actively managed funds, while seeking to balance investment costs by using index funds where appropriate.

The series will employ a glide path that extends 30 years past retirement as a means to help provide investment outcomes and retirement income for the growing number of plan participants who elect to remain in these funds well into their retirement years.

Nuveen is one of the largest investment managers of defined contribution assets in the United States with over $500 billion in retirement plan assets under management.

SkyView Opens Digital Marketplace To Buy And Sell Practices

SkyView Partners, a correspondent lender headquartered in Wayzata, Minn., has launched the Advisor Practice Board of Exchange (APBOE), a subscription-free turnkey solution for buying and selling wealth management practices in conjunction with access to bank financing via a secure and confidential platform.

The exchange has several features to attract prospective buyers, including clear seller search results. It allows site participation anonymity by allowing only verified sellers to view buyer profiles. And it offers a platform to compete for seller listings. To ensure the anonymity of all sellers, the service requires that they are represented by an M&A consultant.

In partnership with these consultants, sellers can search prospective buyers based on their PurchasingPower score, a proprietary ranking methodology gauging buyer creditworthiness and preparedness to acquire a practice.

Initial exchange participants such as Echelon Partners, DeVoe & Company and Smart Concepts Group are providing consulting services to buyers and sellers using the platform.

GROUNDFLOOR Launches Self-Directed IRA Program

GROUNDFLOOR, an Atlanta-based alternative investment platform, has launched GROUNDFLOOR IRA, a self-directed IRA program for individuals and businesses seeking to diversify their retirement savings by creating custom portfolios of real estate investments.

Although self-directed IRAs are growing, only about 2% of all retirement funds in the U.S. are currently held in self-directed IRAs. With a minimum investment of just $10, GROUNDFLOOR investors can create an IRA within a matter of minutes online, then place funds from their IRA into any of GROUNDFLOOR’s product offerings. Returns from those investments are paid into the investor’s GROUNDFLOOR IRA account for reinvestment.

Since inception in 2013, GROUNDFLOOR investors have earned annualized returns averaging 10%-12% in a six- to 12-month time frame.

Investors can earn a $200 bonus for every $20,000 in contributions made between now and the end of the year, up to $10,000. GROUNDFLOOR also is waiving all investor fees on IRAs through the end of 2020.