NAVA is now the Insured Retirement Institute

NAVA Inc. today changed its name to the Insured Retirement Institute, completing a rebranding mission it started this summer. Rather than chiefly representing the variable annuities industry, the Washington-based institute said that it will reach out to advisers and their clients through the group's distributor members, acting as a source of information via webcasts, consumer brochures and research. The institute, formerly based in Reston, Va., will also work closely with peer trade associations and its members to address regulatory reform proposals coming out of Capitol Hill, including the hotly debated use of a fiduciary standard of care for those who give financial advice, said Cathy Weatherford, chief executive and president. In order to reach out to advisers, the institute will also create an adviser council to help develop material research that is relevant to the advising community, she said. Mark Casady, chairman and chief executive of LPL Financial in Boston and the institute's chairman, will likely play a role in corralling the group's distributor members and in having advisers work with the institute in a round-table fashion, Ms. Weatherford said. “We will continue to build content with research that advisers find valuable as they work with clients to put the best retirement products into their portfolios,” she added. Meanwhile, the institute will join forces with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Inc. of New York and Washington as it drafts its consumer brochures in order to ensure Finra-compliant educational material. “We would want to be the authoritative source, putting together information that's objective and factual,” Ms. Weatherford said. One of the institute's adviser-oriented initiatives this fall will include information on how to use social networking tools to build a practice and how to use those tools to support clients, she said.