August 23, 2010
Dear Ms. Murphy,
I am the President of a 200 person broker-dealer in Raleigh, NC. I wanted to let you know that while I agree with the fact that the 12b1 fee could use further disclosure for the sake of the public good, taking a broker`s fee away (or greatly decreasing what they are used to getting paid ) will do nothing but hurt the middle-market investor. The reasons are many but the main one is that brokers will not be able to afford to spend the necessary time on the accounts deemed not profitable enough to service. Also, having an up-front sales charge is going to be a hard-to-swallow event why sell your house for 5% commission if you can do the same thing for 1%. This proposal in its current form will eventually run many of the reps/brokers in our industry over to the fee-based type of RIA account, where they will see less supervision under the State laws should they have AUM of under $100 mill. You and I both know that the states can`t handle the supervision that they currently have. None-the-less, this proposal will create way many unintended consequences and the appropriate loopholes to get around in my opinion. Good luck and God speed.
Respectfully, Richard K. Bryant