NYLife Retirement Adds to Sales Staff

New York Life Retirement Plan Services has added three new executives to its sales organization. 

According to an announcement, Scott Gerber has joined the firm as director of consultant relations, a new position, effective immediately.  In his new role, he will report to Mark Strazzeri, managing director of sales. In addition, the firm has appointed Chris Burkhard as vice president of sales for the Southern region and Peter Hillman as vice president of sales for the Western region.    

Gerber joins New York Life from Diversified Investment Advisors where he served for nine years as director of consultant relations. Earlier in his career, Gerber was a consultant at Evaluation Associates and an investment consultant at Defined Contribution Advisors. He has also worked as a fund analyst at American Express, a risk analyst at Cargill, Inc., and a rating specialist at Standard & Poor’s Corporation. 

For more stories like this, sign up for the PLANADVISERdash daily newsletter.

Prior to his new role at New York Life Retirement Plan Services, Chris Burkhard was a senior account executive and vice president at Fidelity Investments, managing retirement plan sales in the Southwest. Before his 10 years with Fidelity, Burkhard worked in retirement plan sales for PaineWebber (now UBS), and held marketing roles at Cummer/Moyers Capital Advisors, Inc. and Green Investment Management, Inc.  He will report to vice president of sales Bill Kline.     

Peter Hillman, who will report to Sean Kelley, director of sales in the Western Region, will be responsible for both mid- and small-market sales. With 20 years of experience in financial services, Hillman joins New York Life from ADP Retirement Services, where he served for eight years as the retirement services district sales manager in the Pacific Northwest and Midwest.

Morningstar Upgrades Advisor Workstation

Morningstar, Inc., has launched a complete upgrade of Morningstar Advisor Workstation, its research and investment planning software platform used by financial advisers.

Morningstar said the new version includes all of the elements of the original, but incorporates the latest Web technology with interface and usability improvements.

One of the most requested new features Morningstar added is the ability for Advisor Workstation users to work collaboratively with their peers, either within a group office or across multiple offices, via a new file sharing feature. Through file-sharing, any record or file in Advisor Workstation that can be saved can also be shared with a colleague who is a registered user, and advisers can customize the permissions to each user and file.      

Want the latest retirement plan adviser news and insights? Sign up for PLANADVISER newsletters.

Advisers can personalize the homepage’s view to meet their needs. A quick-start feature allows advisers to launch their most frequently used tools with one click, while a top securities list provides the latest, at-a-glance performance statistics for securities used most frequently in the practice.     

Additionally, advisers can now generate reports like Investment Detail Reports and Quicktakes directly from the homepage, and can prominently display their most recently modified files for easy access. A number of market-monitoring tools such as the Morningstar Market Barometer, a tool that provides instant analysis of market trends by Morningstar style index, can also be displayed.      

Advisor Workstation is still built on a modular platform that allows firms to configure to their specifications.  The core capabilities of Advisor Workstation’s five existing modules have not changed, but Morningstar said it has added many functionality and usability improvements:

The firm is also developing two new Advisor Workstation modules that the company expects to be available as integrated capabilities in early 2011. The Real-Time Module, powered by Morningstar QuoteSpeed, features real-time market data and news from dozens of international and U.S. sources, covering all major equity exchanges and indexes, as well as foreign exchange and Treasury markets. Coverage will also include futures, options, commodities, and precious metals.      

The Analyst Research Module will deliver Morningstar’s independent perspective, consistent methodology, and actionable insight for stocks, funds, ETFs, and IPOs. Advisers will also be able to access Morningstar analyst reports, watch videos, view data pages with key financial and historical information, and read insightful articles.  

New Advisor Workstation clients will be launched on the 2.0 platform while existing clients will migrate to it over the next 18 months, based on a migration schedule Morningstar is establishing with each client.      


More information is available at global.morningstar.com/workstation.

«