August 12, 2010
The current regulations provide a very strong and appropriate consumer safeguards to govern broker dealer and registered representatives to provide suitable products for consumers. The standards are very stringent and highly enforced. It seems unnecessary to create more stringent guidelines. Setting out to create more fiduciary standards may push advisors out of the profession, eliminating a valuable consumer resource. To enforce these new fiduciary standards will produce more lawsuits involving higher costs to the consumer. Your proposals will not necessarily result in a better unbiased advice for the consumer. The current guidelines for suitability standards have greatly increased over the last two years and seem to be resulting in more consentience advice to the consumer.