Before you transfer money to  Pakistan, you should find out which techniques  are available, and use the one you assume would  be most convenient. Clearly, not all methods  are useful to all people. For example, if your family  member does not have a bank account, you cannot use the common  route of transferring money to an account.  In such a case, using a prepaid debit card could be the most  helpful method. However, you should ensure that there  are many ATMs in the country before you do so.

Like many  regions, Pakistan has tons of ATMs in the major cities, such as Karachi  and Islamabad. This is because there are plenty of bank locations,  such as Citibank Pakistan, in these cities. The banks tend to  boast ATMs that are open all day, everyday, which makes having  a prepaid debit card in Pakistan quite convenient. However,  more remote areas, like Kashmir, have few,  if any, ATMs, so having some cash there would be good.

Fortunately, it is rather  easy to take cash from  ATMs. If your relative does not live in an area  with plenty of access to these machines, they could consider  traveling to a larger city to withdraw cash  to have on-hand. The charge is usually about  $1.50 USD per withdrawal, or about 128 Pakistan rupee. You  can add up to $1000 USD per day on the card, so your relative can withdraw a sizable amount at once. On  the other hand, some small towns without ATMs do have large  stores that accept debit cards. Your recipient will  probably know if this is the case where they reside.  If they do not live near any ATMs or merchants that take  cards, and do not want to travel, you might be better off  using a different method to transfer money to Pakistan. However,  this route has been known to work in almost any country.

This area  has seen an increase in usage of ATM cards in recent  years. This is largely because more banks in the city  have added ATM machines to their branch, and the people’s  increasing familiarity with them has persuaded even more  banks to continue this trend. Therefore, your family  member should have few problems using a prepaid debit card,  which makes it quite simple for you to transfer money to Pakistan.  You will just ensure that your recipient wants you  to take this pathway, and if so, you can expect to pay a $5  fee each transfer. Your relative can then decide whether  it is more convenient to withdraw cash from ATMs, or  use the debit card to purchase things such as gas, food,  or pay bills online. Either way, your relative will likely  love the flexibility that they are offered when you use a prepaid  debit card to transfer money to Pakistan.

This is a guest post from Richard Pelletier, Principal of Lucid Content in Portland, Oregon. In this second post of a two part series, Richard shares how advisors might consider communicating with their prospective clients through their websites. 

In my last post, I talked about how important it is for financial planners (among others) to use language that is customer-centric or customer focused. The larger point was that customer focused language indicates where your focus is, it signals a respect for your customer and it helps you connect more genuinely with her.    

Today, I’d like to share some thoughts about cognitive fluency, a fascinating, hot topic of study among psychologists. Cognitive fluency touches on the ways that people respond to the different approaches that you take as you try to educate, inform and persuade them.

What is Cognitive Fluency?
Simply defined, cognitive fluency is a measure of how easy it is to think about something. And, not surprisingly, people prefer to think about things that are easy to think about rather than the opposite.

This is common sense, right? If you define financial terms with insider language or difficult to decipher words and sentences, then you’ve made it much harder for me to think about the very thing you want me to consider. On the other hand, if you keep it simple….

I know what you’re saying — I’m stating the obvious. Yes, absolutely, but what’s really important here are the ramifications of how cognitive fluency affects and shapes peoples decision making process.

And that’s where our story gets very interesting.

Fonts, Repetition, Outcomes
It turns out that people are more likely to believe as true — and act on — information that is simple and presented clearly. Let me repeat this because I think it’s a really important point. People are more likely to believe as true, and act on, information that is presented to them simply and clearly. And perhaps even more amazing, this even applies to such decisions as font choice! Repetition and rhyming (hence my title: A Stitch in Time Saves Nine) may also play a role in moving people toward a more favorable view of your words.

In combination, these seemingly subtle changes can actually cause people to be more forgiving, more adventurous and more honest about their own personal shortcomings. Fascinating isn’t it? 

So the next time you create a client questionnaire that has a series of questions about money history, attitudes about money and so on, think about this fact. The quality of your presentation – the look and the feel of the document itself, as well as the clarity and simplicity of the questions – is going to affect how truthfully people will answer your questions.   

So I would posit that it’s not only your copy that should be customer focused, your font choice should be customer focused, too.    

From “Easy = True” by Drake Bennet in The Boston Globe January 31, 2010:

“Because it shapes our thinking in so many ways, fluency is implicated in decisions about everything from the products we buy to the people we find attractive to the candidates we vote for – in short, in any situation where we weigh information. It’s a key part of the puzzle of how feelings like attraction and belief and suspicion work, and what researchers are learning about fluency has ramifications for anyone interested in eliciting those emotions.”

An Adaptive Shortcut
Cognitive fluency seems to function as an adaptive shortcut. In a world where lots of things clamor for our attention, it helps us figure out which things are worth our precious time. The story of cognitive fluency does take some interesting turns. Take disfluency. An example of disfluency might be a difficult to understand concept delivered in a difficult to read font. To some people, disfluency suggests innovation.  

So let’s circle back to the world of financial planners again. You have a website, and if you’re like most people, the goals you have for your website are many. You are trying to educate, inform, persuade, generate leads, and convert visitors into paying customers.

Weighing Information
You have a LOT to say and offer and your site visitors are weighing your information. They are trying to decide whether what you say is true, whether they should be suspicious of it and so on. And they don’t have a lot of time.

So given what we now know about cognitive fluency, it becomes terribly important – beyond the appeal and value of a great design – to simplify and clarify your home page especially, as well as the other key pages of your site. 

One the challenges that all of us face as website owners is the (very strong) temptation to load up our home page with too much information. It’s understandable, but it’s important to not give in to that impulse.

We now have proof that people tend to respond more positively to simple, straightforward messages in an attractive, legible font. Always keep your customers in the forefront of your considerations and wealth and prosperity will be yours.  

Good luck!

About Richard Pelletier
Richard Pelletier is the Principal of Lucid Content, a website copywriting firm.   For more information visit www.lucidcontent.com.

About Kristen Luke
Kristen Luke is the Principal of Wealth Management Marketing, a firm dedicated to providing marketing strategies and support for financial advisors. Kristen works with independent advisors to develop effective marketing plans and provides the back office support required to implement the strategies. For more information, visit www.wealthmanagementmarketing.net.

The global financial and economic crisis significantly boosted the domestic outsourcing market, in particular that the financial and accounting and HR outsourcing process BDO Hungary audit, tax and financial advisory firm’s experience in 2010 was the further market dynamic expansion of up to 20 percent counted. The financial and accounting activities in Hungary, the total outsourcing market is around 35-40 per cent of that figure.
The financial and accounting activities of the companies primarily in the accounting and payroll areas, as well as financial and personnel activities in support of opportunities to outsource administrative tasks to look for external partners. Outsourcing of a given area, the cost to reach the level of 50-60 percent level – emphasizes Peter Hajnal, BDO Hungary accounting, payroll and outsourcing business partner. The professional experience of the United States to start outsourcing wave has primarily been the result of international companies recognize the importance of outsourcing, but now more and more domestic companies are also below the level of size, which requires and enables the placement of accounting and payroll processes and reallocation of resources.
Since the companies are not closely related to core business tasks outsourcing is a means of reducing costs in the Hungarian market only a few years ago started outsourcing processes, the effect of the crisis is even more accelerated, and the known statistics, the financial sector outsourcing ja 10-12 per cent over the past year years – does the BDO partner in Hungary. Dawn Peter adds: BDO Hungary’s financial and accounting outsourcingból from sales between 2006 and 2009 significantly more than the market average of around 60 per cent, and in 2009 reached 340 million forint. This year, more like 20 percent expect growth in this segment, so this activity on turnover from 2010 to 400 million guilders.
Our experience is that companies – especially in times of crisis – the possibility of reducing the costs of outsourcing are typically seen. It is important to emphasize, however, that the financial and accounting tasks to outsourcing firms may gain further advantages, such as the increase in efficiency and professional quality improvement and the sharing of responsibilities is “- said the BDO Hungary accounting, payroll and outsourcing business partner, Peter Hajnal .

So, all firms regulated by the FSA must have good record keeping. This is one of the most sensible regulations. Good records are vital in the event of investigations, complaints, apportionment of blame and establishment of liability. So a recent headline stating that LloydsTSB could not recall whether the government advised them that HBOS was on the brink of collapse when they asked them to take it over, is mind boggling! This is probably the truth, scarily. Who let that slip?  I hope that no brokers would be so slack as to fail to record such information when advising clients! This is just more confirmation that the world is MAD.

Accounting information system is a system of records, usually computer based, which combines accounting principles and concepts with the benefits of an information system and which is used to analyze and record business transactions for the purpose to prepare financial statements and provide accounting data to its users. Some accounting information systems are still manual, i.e. accounting records are made with a pen, paper and manual entries into accounting books.

How are Such Systems Used?
These systems can be customized to meet the needs of a business. For example, information technology professionals responsible for business processes and information technology professionals responsible for the accounting information system can work together to develop and implement such a system so that it automatically gets information from other sources already in use by the business. Also, the systems can be set up to feature certain functions that are important to the business and eliminate functions minor to the business.  Information can be automatically fed, or manually fed into a business accounting information system at whatever pace and however often it is necessary.

What are the Benefits of Using Accounting Information System?
Businesses use accounting information systems to make their accounting activities easier, quicker, and more accurate, since accounting records are analyzed and financial statements are prepared within the system, which allows to safe time of employees and avoid mistakes.  Since many accounting information systems are equipped with error-reducing mechanisms and gather information regarding transactions electronically and automatically, data entry and computing errors are rare. Also, as mentioned above, since such systems are often automatically populated with transaction information, many accounting processes are less cumbersome and time-consuming when using such system.

Of course implementation of such system requires investment and time to be spent on the implementation, however future benefits are much higher that the expenses incurred. Also to consider whether business needs accounting information system and what kind of system is required thorough analysis of business and accounting processes has to be made to determine precise requirements.

For many financial advisors, stepping into the world of social media can feel like stepping into a swarm of gnats. There are little distractions coming at you from every direction at the same time you’re worried one of those gnat bites will be a compliance violation. So why should the individual advisor step into the fray? If you do, how do you protect yourself?

Why it matters for the individual advisor to use social media

1. Sub-specialty networking and prospect identification. You can find and connect with thought leaders, peers, and potential clients in specialty areas where they’re harder to find through traditional channels and do so in real-time.
2. Reputation management. Bad news can spread on the web like throwing gasoline on charcoal. At the least you want to know what’s being said about you or your firm soon enough to make action worth taking.
3. Cost-effective, timely client/prospect communication. Twitter, blogging, and the like can offer a great way create value-adds for more of the right people with timely, targeted information sharing. You stay top-of-mind without spending top dollar.
4. Knowing what’s top of mind in real time. Marketing surveys aren’t always timely and don’t always get to what you really want to know. Social media usage can help you get sense of what clients might say to you—or be thinking about and not say to you—in real time.

Tools you can use and still stay focused

Stick to monitoring and information sharing unless—and until—you work with an expert to develop a marketing strategy that includes social media. Until then, here are a few steps to get started.

1. Monitor what’s being said about you. Set up a Google search alert for a daily sweep. Include your name, your business name, and your corporate parent name, etc. Set it for a daily sweep
2. Know what might be top of mind for a client. Use a real-time search engine before your first client meeting each day. Leapfish and Scoopler are two that aggregate both conventional news sources and social media outlets like Twitter. Spend five minutes to see what they might ask about or what you might highlight to show you’re on top of the game.
3. Establish a scalable home base. Hootsuite is my favorite on this front. It makes Twitter manageable and makes it easy to add on other social media tactics like a blog—all from one site.

In the absence of clearly defined goals,we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until we become enslaved by it.

~Robert Hunlein 1907-1988~

Why be enslaved by the mundane lifestyle you are in. Get into an new SCV career. I will help make that trivial work life more exciting. Contact me ASAP at www.careerchangesscv.com

Daniel Valente Dantas. Graphic: VEJA magazine, May 2006, when it reported: “Daniel Dantas has a list that may show illegal offshore bank accounts controlled by the president and party bigwigs.” VEJA had plenty of evidence that “almost certainly does not” was the phrase to use instead of “may.”

UOL Notícias (Brazil)reports — for some reason strange reason in the Politics section:

Por quatro a um, a 5ª Turma do STJ (Superior Tribunal de Justiça) decidiu negar nesta quinta-feira (4) habeas corpus ao banqueiro Daniel Dantas e manter todos os atos da Operação Satiagraha, da Polícia Federal, na qual foi preso o sócio-fundador do Opportunity, em julho de 2008. A decisão mantém o juiz Fausto Martin De Sanctis à frente do caso.

By a vote of 4-1, the Fifth Chamber of the federal appeals court (STJ) today denied the habeas corpus petition of banker Daniel Dantas and upheld all the proceedings in the Operation Satiagraha investigation by the federasl police, which culminated in the arrest of the Opportunity founding partner in July 2008. The decision leaves Judge Fausto Martin de Sanctis in charge of the case.

O advogado Andrei Schmidt, que representa o banqueiro Daniel Dantas, afirmou nesta quinta-feira (4) ao UOL Notícias que a defesa irá estudar se entra com recurso contra a decisão.

Dantas attorney Andrei Schmidt told UOL today that the defense is studying an appeal.

O habeas corpus foi apresentado pela defesa do banqueiro no final do ano passado, e uma liminar foi concedida para suspender a Satiagraha até que fosse julgado o mérito do pedido pelos ministros da Turma.

The petition was filed by the defense at the end of last year, and an injunction was granted suspending the Satiagraha investigation until the merits of the petition was adjudicated by the magistrates of the Fifth Chamber.

A liminar havia sido concedida por Arnaldo Esteves Lima, que entrou de férias em seguida, juntamente com todos os demais componentes da Corte em razão do recesso do Judiciário. Com a decisão temporária, todos os atos em relação à Satiagraha ficaram congelados.

The injunction suspending the case was granted by Arnaldo Esteves Lima, who immediately thereafter left on vacation along with his colleagues, the Judiciary being in recess. With the temporary decision, all the actions in the case were frozen.

A defesa de Dantas contestou a isenção do juiz Fausto Martin De Sanctis, responsável pelo processo no caso na 6ª Vara Criminal de São Paulo. Para os advogados, o juiz comprometeu o processo tomando decisões parciais e se manifestando sobre ele fora dos autos.

The Dantas defense questioned the impartiality of Judge de Sanctis, in charge of the case in the Sixth Criminal Bar of São Paulo. In their view, the judge tainted the proceedings with biased decisions and comments on the case outside of official proceedings.

Não é a primeira vez que os advogados do banqueiro contestam o juiz. No início do ano passado, o Órgão Especial do TRF (Tribunal Regional Federal) da 3ª Região negou abrir processo por desobediência contra De Sanctis, que determinou nova prisão de Dantas mesmo depois de ordem de soltura do ministro Gilmar Mendes, presidente do STF (Supremo Tribunal Federal).

This is not the first time the banker’s attorneys have contested the judge. Early last year, the Special Organ of the Regional Federal Court (TF) of the Third Region declined to open proceeding against de Sanctis for disobedience after the judge handed down a second arrest warrant for Dantas, even after Supreme Court Chief Justice Mendes ordered the banker released.

Se o juiz fosse declarado suspeito, tudo o que foi determinado até agora, incluindo a condenação de Dantas a 10 anos de prisão por tentativa de suborno a um delegado da PF e o recebimento de denúncia que o tornou réu juntamente com outros 13 acusados por crimes financeiros, estaria invalidado.

Had the judge been ordered to recuse himself, all rulings to date, including the sentencing of Dantas to 10 years in prison for bribery of a federal police agent and the indictment that made Dantas and 13 others defendants in a financial crimes case would have been overturned.

A classic moment in the federal police report was an intercepted e-mail from an Opportunity executive to an attorney at the Gordilho lawfirm, advising him that the deadline for the “defamation campaign” had been set, and had he lined up the willing journalist — possibly a senior columnist, now deceased, at O Globo — yet?

Dantas, an MIT graduate, was once the chief financial advisor to the PFL political party — the Party of the Liberal Front — nowadays known, weirdly, as the Democrats.

His original attorney, Nélio Machado, is now busy defending the DEM governor of the federal district, caught on video taking and distributing bribed money.

Click to zoom:

As to the defamatory text, Opportunity would prefer that the lawyer write it, as it would be better if were written by a civil rather than a criminal lawyer.

The defamation campaign against the judge waged by Consultor Jurídico — a legal news ervice run by the proprietor of a PR agency representing numerous Dantas attorneys — accused the jurist of being Nazi-inspired for having cited German jurist Carl Schmidt in a speech or essay, I forget which.

(The Chief Justice had himself cited Schmidt in the past, it turned out.)

Out and out naked cooption of journos into running libel written by libel lawyers under their own byline.

Holy shit.

Welcome to Sambodia.