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While a life insurance agent/broker may be a valuable resource and advisor, the very nature of today's products and compensation structure, coupled with the lack of transparency, create substantial conflicts of interest between what is best for the client and what is best for the agent. What are the conflicts, how meaningful are they and how can families protect themselves? This paper from Pelagos Advisors advocates a fiduciary standard for agents to ensure accountability.

Analysis by Spring Mountain Capital shows that increased spending will profoundly jeopardize the long-term health of endowments. This paper proposes a framework for analyzing spending decisions that can be of use to endowments and other types of investors who need to balance long-term growth objectives with short-term spending needs.

Proposed changes to information reporting on IRS Form 1099 would place a greater burden on businesses to accurately identify income taxable to others and assess larger penalties on businesses that fail to do so. In this report, Vogel Consulting details the cost of non-compliance and offers suggestions of what businesses can do to be prepared.

A new white paper from the Lindquist Group addresses household staffing needs under a variety of circumstances, offers best practices for hiring and terminating staff members, and provides tips and resources related to taxes, insurance, benefits and salaries.

The authors discuss the impact of the addicted client on the emotional well-being of financial planners. They explore how to recognize the signs of addiction, seek competent assistance, and support recovery including what works for improved treatment.

This paper from AQR Capital Management helps demystify managed futures, one of the few investments that performed well in 2008. The authors describe how to construct a simple version of this strategy, illustrate how this simple version performs in various market environments, and show how managed futures can be used to enhance the risk-return profiles of traditional portfolios.

Since 6 April 2008 non-UK domiciliaries have only been allowed to claim foreign losses if they make an election for such losses to be allowable. However, making the election without careful consideration could mean losses being absorbed against foreign gains that would not have been taxable in the UK. Withers Worldwide outlines these considerations and covers other useful information about claiming foreign losses.

This white paper from Atlantic Trust reviews the history of the Economic Growth and Tax Reconciliation Act of 2001, offers a look at recently proposed tax reform bills, and urges families to continue with careful estate planning, asset protection planning, business succession plans and charitable plans.

While conversion to IFRS has benefits, the transition from U.S. GAAP to IFRS is significantly more than a technical accounting issue. In this article, Rothstein Kass provides a high-level overview on the adoption of IFRS for investment companies currently in conformity with U.S. GAAP.

A thorough understanding of the risks from extreme market moves is essential to a realistic estimation of a strategy's risk/reward profile. Every market professional is aware that with risk come opportunities. In this paper, LJM Partners shows that a process can be built to use the heightened premiums of OTM S&P options to enhance returns.