August 3, 2010
I have a Series 6,7,63,65 license. I am licensed in Life Insurance and Long Term Care. I have been in the industry for 20 years and I have had only one complaint filed against me for my recommendations on investments and financial planning. By the way, that complaint was in my first 3-5 years in the business and my firm suppported me in the settlement of that case. I have had a clean record ever since.
I take 12 hours of CE a year on firm element investment learning another 24 hours every two years on insurance continuing education. I take an anti-money laundering course and an ethics course to be in compliance with all the fiduciary responsibilities on me already every year.
Everytime I place a trade I have multiple compliance forms that have to be signed and disclosed to the client before investing their funds. The paperwork has become a tremedous liability to doing the right thing for the client because of the time involvement. What use to take a half hour to open up an account has now taken close to an hour. The amount of legalise that has to be disclosed and the fact that most clients don't want to read all the disclosures just proves to me that we are already way over-regulated. I believe in a normal course of day to day transactions, we spend 2 hours a day making sure we are compliant with all the industry standards now.
I try and offer my clients the best solutions based on their needs and not mine. To be licensed in a traditional broker-dealer way and to be an investment advisor with fiduciary responsibilities and roles are one in the same for me. I treat each and every client the same way.
Compliance costs-both in terms of finances and time-are high, and those costs are eventually felt by clients. Adding another layer of regulation means another layer of compliance, and even more cost to clients.
If you pass this law-the 20 years of effort that I have put into an honest, integrity driven business will be for nothing because I am not sure I can survive. Please reconsider the unintended consequences of these actions as it will have a negative impact on 240 families that I help on a regular basis.