The United States is facing a retirement crisis, and the financial industry is evolving to respond to it. This TowerGroup Research Note discusses the approach that US financial institutions are taking to solve this crisis. The Note evaluates an array of retirement income products and discusses why TowerGroup believes that the demand for financial advice will grow and that advisory services not products is the solution to the retirement income challenge. Finally, the Note discusses some emerging technologies that will radically alter the way financial advice is offered in the United States.

Is the opportunity in Asia as big as most people think? This is just one of the questions that arise during conversations about the opportunities and challenges of doing business in Asia. The revenue potential is too great to ignore, and securities firms are constantly evaluating their Asia strategy to accommodate market changes. This TowerGroup Research Note explores 12 Asian countries that TowerGroup believes offer the greatest potential for the global securities and investments industry. The Note discusses some key differences among the countries and analyzes the state of Asian capital markets.

This TowerGroup ViewPoint examines the impact of SWIFT's recent receipt of "no-action" relief from the Securities and Exchange Commission for its electronic trade confirmation (ETC) message, the MT515. This event means that the confirmation message now complies with SEC's rule 10b-10, which sets disclosure requirements for trade confirmations sent by broker-dealers to their customers. The designation establishes the SWIFT message as an option for delivering and storing compliant electronic trade notifications for non-DTCC eligible securities and for cross-border trades. This ViewPoint discusses the consequences of the upgrade in designation for industry participants.

To say that the next 20 years belongs to emerging markets is no exaggeration. The financial services industry will grow at a much faster rate in emerging than in developed markets, and foreign securities firms and the technology sector can share in this growth. This ViewPoint examines the growth potential for emerging markets and outlines the five markets offering the greatest potential for growth for the global securities and investments industry in the next five years.

High-frequency trading (HFT) is a hot topic in the global securities and investments business because of its growing impact on market liquidity, trading volumes, market structure, and general investor confidence. HFT has been a very successful trading strategy in the United States and parts of Europe, garnering the securities firms involved hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. However, the publicity is unwelcome to firms engaged in HFT because it attracts new competitors and greater scrutiny from regulators focused on curtailing its scope and scale. This Tower Group Research Note describes HFT in the United States and contrasts it with HFT in other geographic regions.

The capital markets meltdown of 2008 led to massive government intervention, forced mergers and acquisitions, and a scramble for capital infusion. The prime brokerage business bore its share of the pain as industry icons disappeared and investors reassessed their strategies. Longstanding relationships between the buy side — hedge funds in particular — and their service providers became the object of a recalibration exercise in the industry. This TowerGroup Research Note examines the effect of these changes to the traditional prime services model, the factors influencing hedge funds' choice of prime broker, and the challenges and opportunities for prime services going forward.

Until fall 2009, financial services institutions showed little sign of taking firm action to comply with the mandate to begin reporting the adjusted cost basis of securities transactions on Internal Revenue Service Form 1099 with tax-reporting year 2011. The industry has since dramatically improved its preparedness for cost basis reporting, TowerGroup finds in this Research Note, the third in a series of reports presenting the data from TowerGroup's 2009 Cost Basis Preparedness Survey, conducted in Q3 2009. The Note focuses on the cost basis reporting functionality that financial service institutions will deliver to their clients and the potential gaps in compliance.

Will the card be declined if the customer attempts to purchase a $400,000 Ferrari on a card? Payment products designed for the very wealthy must be customized for this select customer segment. Deregulation has allowed banking and wealth management firms to come together, and the financial crisis has dictated that they do so to remain vibrant. Convergence presents opportunity to firms that effectively segment clients and offer targeted product stacks that meet the high-net-worth segment's unique needs. This Research Note discusses how financial services institutions can combine payment products with wealth management services to build very compelling offerings for wealthy clients.

The sovereign debt crisis in Greece is spreading to other sovereign states in the Euro-zone. The crisis has demonstrated the fragility of the European Monetary Union (EMU), and it threatens the development of a pan-European financial services market. This TowerGroup ViewPoint, which is based on the successful hypotheses set out in March 2007 in TowerGroup Research Note V50:29ES, The European Monetary Union (EMU) Beyond 2010: Untested Assumptions, examines the current realities of the crisis and concludes by hypothesizing its impact on the environment for financial services institutions and technology vendors at the end of 2012.

The analysis of a fund's performance or a particular investment decision's profitability remains the primary measure of a portfolio manager's value. Therefore, the selection of a performance measurement and attribution vendor is critical. This report supplements the overview of leading vendors initiated in Research Note V62:13M, Setting the Benchmark, Part I: Measuring the Vendors in Performance Measurement and Attribution, which profiles vendors of performance measurement solutions sold mainly in conjunction with portfolio accounting systems. The present report focuses on vendors that offer performance functionality as part of an integrated portfolio management offering.