August 11, 2010
To Whom It May Concern, I serve my customers as a registered rep. for my Broker Dealer. We are subject to layers of training and checkups on how we do our business, suitability, and all manner of compliance issues. We have inspections by our managers as well as the home office compliance staff. We have a "Firm Element" training annually, every two years we do "Computer Based Training" on securities, as well as a monthly newsletter detailing more regulatory and compliance problems.
In my opinion raising the bar to "fiduciary duty" is going to increase our already heavy burden of paperwork to an even more onerous level without offering our clients much, if any, more protection. Most of our clients are those with a smaller net worth that the larger brokerage houses are not interested in dealing with and many times would not want to pay for a fee based system.
I have invested hundreds of hours of study and training to be able to do what I do for my clients. I am proud of the care that I take in dealing with clients.
Please allow us to continue to provide the professional services we offer to our clients without imposing additional layers of compliance for us to deal with.
Thank you for your consideration of my opinions.
Mark Mendenhall, CLU, ChFC, LUTCF