Many wealth management clients often want to know how to prevent their children from becoming entitled. Specifically, they’re concerned that their children will rely on family wealth instead of forging their own paths to success and will lack an understanding of money beyond how to spend it. Moreover, parents may inadvertently seed entitlement in their children even as they’re trying to avoid it. To sidestep the entitlement trap, here are five consistently identified principles to help parents create more self-reliant children.
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Cannabis is one of the most promising industries emerging today and has the potential to impact and reshape the global, social, and business landscape. In this report, a spotlight is shined on the most pressing investment issues and trends facing the cannabis industry to help investors, companies, and investment banks navigate risk in the fast-moving market. The report also examines the industry from a private market perspective, including a growing ecosystem and the valuation of cannabis startups.
On the day that New York State honored the U.S. women’s soccer team for their World Cup victory—a team whose members have publicly demanded pay equity with the U.S. men’s soccer team—Governor Andrew Cuomo signed legislation amending the state’s pay equity law. Employers everywhere should pay attention to developments on the state and local wage front, as issues of pay and pay equity continue to occupy center stage.
Lawmakers are well aware of the significant contributions to economic and job growth made by small businesses. As a direct incentive for starting and investing in small businesses, Congress has provided varying levels of beneficial treatment in the tax code for Qualified Small Business Stock (QSBS) since 1993. With the recent tax laws, including the reduction of the C Corporation tax rate to a flat 21%, it has made C Corporation status and QSBS treatment more attractive.
Ransomware has become prevalent and can cause significant downtime and leaving businesses with no choice but to pay the ransom. The bad actors aren’t just trying to steal personal, identifiable information but are frequently monitoring email correspondence to manipulate invoices and redirect payroll to accounts they control. Employee training and multi-factor authentication are vital to your cyber defense.
Employers of all sizes inadvertently put themselves at risk by not having a policy establishing how long to continue benefits during a leave of absence (LOA). So, before the important questions arise, employers should establish an LOA Policy that considers employee needs, carrier contractual provisions, federal and state benefit regulations, and the employer’s company culture. Having a policy in place and regularly updated will minimize costly risks, as well as create an easier path to communication when employees will need it most.
With the implementation of California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) set to go into effect January 1, 2020, anyone doing businesses with California residents should not only be preparing their digital strategies to comply with the new law, they should also be assessing their risk and reviewing their cyber insurance and adequacy of limits. Why? Now, at $100 minimum per individual incident, a small data breach of 5,000 people equates to $500,000 in damages. Given the minimum statutory damage provision, expect a significant uptick in class action lawsuits following data breaches.
Over the past 40 years, creating and maintaining financial security has become more of a personal endeavor. Despite record aggregate levels of U.S. wealth, large portions of the population appear quite vulnerable. Avoiding late-cycle overconfidence as it relates to both spending and investment decisions is key.
Stocks and bonds delivered spectacular performance in the first six months of 2019. The S&P index of large-cap U.S. stocks returned 18.5% for the year through June 30, while the Barclays Aggregate index of investment-grade bonds delivered an equally impressive 6.1% return. Declining interest rates—sparked by the Federal Reserve—deserve most of the credit for the impressive performance. But what should we expect for the second half of 2019? On the one hand, economic growth in the U.S. remains reasonably healthy, if not robust.
While far-reaching cyberattacks targeting the Internet of Things (IoT) devices hasn’t happened yet, it will in the not-too-distant future. Given the rapid pace of change and possibility, cyber risk insurance policies written a few years ago may not have adequate language to cover potential losses and damages that today’s IoT vulnerabilities expose. Now is the time to start reassessing cyber risk profiles in an IoT world.