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Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) were born out of the Affordable Care Act (or Obamacare, if you prefer) as an attempt to lower costs and improve the quality of care to Medicare patients. The principle is to provide coordinated care instead of the potentially fractured care that sends patients back-and-forth among disparate doctors and specialists. By
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“Strangle options” have a violent name, but have a vital role in investments. Strangle options are use both put and call options effectively to place bets on how stable the movement of a stock will be, regardless of the direction of the move. Puts and calls are contracts that allow you the right to buy
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A study shows that several people are unaware or unprepared for the reset that will be applied to home equity lines of credit (HELOC) in coming years. Of the 800 homeowners questioned, 43 percent will be affected by the change, with 23 percent admitting that they have no financial plans for handling the reset. Conducting
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The past few years have been tough for prospective homebuyers, with many finding it almost impossible to qualify for mortgages. However, several new programs have come into effect, helping creditworthy borrowers get on the property ladder. Over recent months, things have begun to ease. For example, some new terms now include a down payment of
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In May, after calls for tighter payday loan regulations and fines levied against companies for deceptive practices, Google banned all payday loans from its search results. The ban went into effect on July 20, but more than two months later, the ban appears to have had little effect. Ads for payday loans and other high-interest
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The long-running bull market may have instilled investor overconfidence in stocks when it comes to 401(k) accounts — or it is possible that people just don’t pay attention to the composition of their 401(k) plans. For whatever reason, a study from Fidelity Investments suggests that too many 401(k) accounts are too heavy in stocks and
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The Fitch Group has recently released its U.S. RMBS Servicer Handbook for the most recent quarter. The handbook shows that many banks offering mortgages have halved the number of staff in their mortgage servicing departments during the last two years. The decision to downsize these departments is primarily the result of these lenders seeing their
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It sounds like a Hollywood script. Thousands of employees at a major financial institution create false accounts in their customers’ names and shuttle money around temporarily to cover their tracks, all to gain larger bonuses and meet sales goals. These employees even go so far as to create fake PINs and contact information for these
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Freddie Mac announced on Monday, September 26, that it would launch a new program to help reduce the risk it takes on various mortgages. The program will transfer backing to several private mortgage insurance companies. The loans included in this pilot program are those that were acquired by Freddie Mac starting September 1, 2016, and
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Five loan companies in Arizona have been sued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) for failing to follow disclosure guidelines in online advertisements. Guidelines state that lenders must follow specific formats for disclosing any interest rate changes in online marketing. The five lenders, which make loans secured by the borrower’s car title, did not
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Theft of debit card information from ATMs is on a major rise, according to FICO. From the beginning of the year until April 9th, debit card information theft rose 174% over the same period in 2014 through ATMs located on bank properties and a staggering 317% in ATMs on non-bank properties. The surge represents the
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According to a statement made on Monday, by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), a large number of mortgage lenders are now following the new regulations implemented last year by the Dodd-Frank Act. These new regulations govern mortgage originations and the dispersal of information to borrowers, among other things. Other rules apply to a borrower’s
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There are unicorns on Wall Street? Indeed there are, but not the fictional beasts that are a favorite of pre-teen girls. As defined on Wall Street, unicorns are private companies that have valuations of over $1 billion. Generally, these are startups expected to create disruptive growth as they mature. There are well over 100 unicorns
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A recent survey revealed that the average consumer is unable to fully understand the terms and conditions outlined in their cardholder agreement. The survey looked at a number of different credit card user agreements and rated their reading level using the Flesch-Kincaid readability test. The average reading level for these agreements equates to that of
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Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Bob Goodlatte has introduced a new draft of the Online Sales Simplification Act (OSSA) that, if passed, would create an online sales tax that is much less complicated than the current method for online retailers to collect taxes. The way internet sales taxes are currently collected depends on whether the retailer
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As the qualifications for small business loans become more difficult to meet, many small business owners are looking for alternatives. Many have found that going with an online lender has advantages over banks and other traditional lenders, although there are some disadvantages as well. One of the reasons small business owners are looking at online
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When applying for a loan, most small business owners assume they will be evaluated only on the information they supplied on their application, but that’s not always the case. In fact, when applying for a loan from an online lender, that lender often takes into account things such as the social media profile of the
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The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission oversees cases involving mortgages, but the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has recently stepped in to ban several companies from operating in the mortgage industry after finding them guilty of making false claims to homeowners. The companies, Redstone Law Group and Surety Law Group, voluntarily agreed to the ban in
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Are lottery tickets a component of your retirement program? Then you sound like an extreme risk-taker when it comes to investing. Do you throw up every time you hear that the stock market dropped? Then odds are you are a conservative investor. All kidding aside, it is wise to take time to seriously assess your
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When most people hear about numbers at the box office, they think of Hollywood and the movie industry. However, Broadway theater productions can rack up impressive numbers, with some shows crossing the billion-dollar plateau in worldwide box office receipts. Collectively, Broadway brought in a record $1.37 billion in revenue in the 2015-2016 season — not
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Let’s say we offer to hold 10,000 dollars of your money and pay you back $9,900 after five years. Why would you agree to a deal like that? That is the very sort of thing that is happening in Europe, with bonds that are literally generating negative interest rates. Germany, France, Sweden, and Denmark all
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Imagine that you visit an ATM to withdraw cash and instead of completing your transaction through scanning a card and entering a PIN, you simply tap the screen and scan a code to receive your cash. You don’t have to imagine it; in some locations, you can experience it. Cardless ATM transactions through mobile apps
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When it comes to the many different ways you can invest your money, investing in guns is probably not the first thing that pops into your mind. Firearms are usually bought for protection or sport. However, some people buy them as an investment, hoping that their value will increase over time. This has especially been
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Much of Wall Street was pleased in June when all but two of the largest U.S. banks passed the so-called “stress test” applied by the Federal Reserve. What is this stress test, where does it come from, and why do the results matter to Wall Street? The stress tests come from the Dodd-Frank legislation that
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