August 17, 2010
To whom it may concern,
I firmly believe that the fiduciary standard is a "MUST" for all financial advisors. I spent over 25 years in the institutional fixed income markets as a salesman before getting involved in the retail business. I would strongly argue that the level of professionalism, integrity and due diligence needs to be raised considerably from the current level of advisors that deal with retail. Currently, the level demanded by the industry that serves individual clients is NOT at the same level as that of the institutional market. This is backwards. The level of integrity for advisors dealing with individual investors should be greater than that of their institutional counterparts simply because they are not as sophisticated as the institutions. The "fiduciary standard" would go a long way to rectifying this situation. I think this is obvious.