August 6, 2010
I oppose more stringent fiduciary regulation on the Securities industry. My feelings on this topic are not because I am opposed to ethical conduct, not do I oppose strict penalties for those who are found to use false, misleading or self-serving practices in their conduct of the sale of securites.
What I am opposed to are over-restrictive rules that tie the hands of honest hard working reprentatives like myself, and actually stand in the way of delivering effective and helpful sales and service of securities products.
Existing regulations make is nearly impossible to deliver informative material to potential and existing clients. I am not permitted to correspond in writin or email to clients' questions. I am not allowed to do any comparitive analysis which would help the client weigh the merits of various investment alternatives.
In addition, I am required to submit to 3 Company audits of my securities files each year. These are done presumably to make sure we are prepared for possible arbitray reviews by regulators who have the authority to drop by unannounced to inspect my files. These audits are time consuming for me, and cause my company to turn management and sales personnel into regulators who must spend the majority of their time conducting these wasteful audits.
Our existing regulations also restict or prohibit the sale of certain products to indiviuals based on such arbitrary criteria as age, income or wealth. Rather than looking at the situation of each individual client, the rules assume that if a person is in a certain demagraphic group they are automatically not qualifed to own such a product.
In today's legal environment, any time a person suffers a loss it is presumed that someone acted in a malicious, or at least negligent manner. Increased regulation of the securites industry is just one more step in that direction where the government is helping those who are constantly searching to find the "bad guy" in every situation.
Please do not add more regulation to an industry that is already far too regulated.