August 27, 2010
How can any registered rep be an expert on all financial products. I believe harsher penalties for those doing bad business is more of a deterrent than piling on layers of bureaucracy, fees, and paperwork for those doing good business. The suitability standard is perfect for the average client with 25k to 1,000k of investable assets. The above 1,000k clients can afford a fee based advisor, those under 1,000k fee based work is over kill and expensive. The symptoms that the current direction of regulation is intended, or, need to correct, are not in everyday blue and white collar financial business. It is plain to see that the wall between mortgage and commercial banking existing prior to the 2000s prevented the malfeasance deceptive practices and unregulated insurance products that caused the 2008 crises. Dont undo the part of the financial industry that is working, fix the part that needs fixing. Look at the number of everyday clients that receive good representation over the years as opposed to the dollar volume of institutional clients that were simply greedy.