August 24, 2010
As a Certified Financial Planner and a citizen, I am deeply concerned about continuing to let investment professionals put their own interests before those of their clients and customers. We all saw the havoc wrecked in people's lives during the credit crisis by brokerage firm employees who legally sold toxic derivatives and mortgage pool investments. Let's learn from our lapses. Everyone who makes money recommending investments for purchase must be required to base their advice on the overall financial situation and risk tolerance of their clients and customers. Once all financial advisors are held to a fiduciary standard, we can begin to rebuild the public's understandably eroded trust in financial institutions. As a citizen, I can rest easier in feeling that the potential for uninformed or unscrupulous financial advisors to misled clients and customers and misuse their funds has been diminished. And as a CFP, I can stop having to overcome the negative feelings the people I meet often have about the financial advisors who "helped" them in the past.