August 6, 2010
While compliance is necessary, I can tell you that I already spend mountains of time of suitability, maintaining records that are often very redundant, participate in compliance and continuing education classes, and pay a very hefty override to my B/D so that they can "supervise" me. What I have seen from the SEC and FINRA is agonizingly slow and often pointless audits, trying to uncover why I have suggested an annuity over a mutual fund or why I had Coke instead of Pepsi. These individuals have an agenda and that is to find "SOMETHING"....anything...
Meanwhile, the really big transgressors like Bernard Madoff somehow avoid scrutiny until millions or billions have been lost. The argument that, "We are trying to prevent that." doesn't make sense when so much in resources is spent crucifying 99% of advisors trying to find 1% of the bad guys instead of punishing the 1% when they DO the wrong thing.
Adding another layer of compliance and due diligence will cost countless more hours and money that, ultimately, doesn't protect the consumer anymore than current standards do. This is clearly just a way to grow the government further...hiring more people who have little to no industry experience, or if they do, couldn't cut it. These same individuals, who have nothing but pure contempt for salespeople use their government given power to make life very miserable for us, take time away from serving our clients and cost us even more money in additional regulation costs.