August 24, 2010
The idea of requiring more regulation with the fiduciary standards seems to be overkill at the very least. The idea that offering clients the 'best' advice assumes all things are equal, and that makes it very difficult to do the realy define what is best for a client.
There is such a high level of compliance already that producers are overwhelmed with filing, paperwork, tracking correspondence, etc. When and how will we best serve our clients since cost and time requirements will increase with more rules.
I am all for demanding advisors do the best job they can for clients but it still can be a subjective thing even if you are a fee based planner only. It will appear we all will have to go to fee based planning only and this will not help a majority of cutomers because they won't want to or can't afford to pay for help.
This is a well intentioned idea that has gone too far like a lot of government mandated rules and regs. It doesn't really keep any one that is dishonest from taking advantage of clients and hurts the advisors that are doing a great job for the right reasons for their clients. We aren't the problem, you should be looking at the people that really control the markets and trading and that will better protect the retail public. thank you