5 Financial Stocks Hiking Dividends At Double-Digit Rates

The financial sector has outperformed the broad market over the past year, buoyed by a recovering economy, better loan demand, and improving credit quality. The outlook for the sector is positive, on expectations that accelerating GDP will lead to higher loan growth, the housing market will continue its recovery, bolstering home prices, improving returns on equity will drive valuations higher, and rising bond yields next year will steepen the yield curve, helping improve net interest margin. What's more, better capital adequacy is allowing many financial companies to hike dividends at robust rates, pushing up their yields to attractive levels. As investors move into growth-sensitive sectors such as financials, it may be expected that stocks of life insurance companies, asset managers, and banks will post strong total returns in the near-to-medium term. Part of these total returns will come from dividends. In fact, many financial stocks offer both... Read more