2011 was an unusual year for commodities and hard assets investing.

Freddie Mac's archives contain weekly, monthly and annual historic data for fixed (15-year and 30-year) and adjustable rate mortgages. They will help you show clients todays historic opportunity to refinance an existing mortgage at lower rates, thus freeing up more cash flow for investment or insurance.

Some 483,000 American retirement plans must send new disclosures to their 72 million participants by May 31. You can certainly turn that into business.

For years, the life insurance industry has dreamed of a paperless application that agents could fill out and submit electronically in the field, without carrying stacks of hard copy documents.

Its not too soon to start tapping into the special investment needs and concerns of this generation, especially if you provide advice to retirement plans.

A new study by LIMRA International, released in November of 2011, shows that two factors are powerful in influencing consumers decisions to buy life insurance.

You can help clients monitor the impact of creeping expenses by encouraging a formal monthly budget.

In a cost-saving move, Social Security has suspended the annual mailing of personal benefit estimates, which traditionally arrived a few months before each covered workers birthday.