August 16, 2010
Imposing additonal fiduciary responsiblities on an already highly regulated industry will only result in a mountain of paperwork and costs for broker dealers. I spend more time now doing paperwork and documenting my work for complaince reasons than I do with educating my clients. The entire compliance process is a deterrent for clients because of the time it takes to open an account. I had a client in my office a few months ago opening 5 accounts ( variety of IRA's and education accounts) and that couple was in my office almost 3 hours, primarily because we had to do suitability paperwork with every application. In addition, our suitability department reviews every transaction and I have to answer questions about the transactions once again. There are checks and balances with State Farm. We spend at least 16 hours a year in classroom and online education. In addition, we are require to take a Securities Regulatory Element Test as a testing center every 3 years. We are visited by a compliance officer annually in addition to that. The American public is not investing for their futures as they should be and additional compliance and increased costs will not entice future savings by the public. Enough is enough Regulations can not protect every incident that can go wrong out there. There will always be someone trying to work the system at the disadvantage of the client due to whatever reason. We need to deal with those criminals by punishing them, not by punishing everyone else for a few bad apples.