We in the financial planning community believe that something called a “fiduciary standard” is the very best framework for professionals to work with our clients.
That’s why we’re so angry over something that happened in the Senate over the weekend: Senator Tim Johnson of South Dakota inserted an amendment into the new regulatory reform bill–and, with the casual stroke of a pen, eliminated an important and powerful consumer protection.
This amendment cuts out a part of the original bill that would have required everybody who gives investment advice to the public to act as a fiduciary. Senator Johnson wants the Senate to “study” the issue instead.
Why should you care?
The fiduciary standard is a legal concept, but its core idea is not complicated. To act as a fiduciary means we professionals have to put aside our own financial interests, and also put aside the business/financial interests of any company we work for, and give recommendations that are solely and completely in the best interests of people like you, our customers or clients.
In other words, our recommendations have to be made with only one concern: is this the best thing I (the professional) can do for you, given what I know about who you are and what you want and need?
So what does it mean NOT to be a fiduciary? Imagine that there were two kinds of health practitioners in the world. One group functions much like doctors do today: they work out of independent offices, meet with you, diagnose your ailments, prescribe a medical solution that they believe is the very best course of treatment, and you pay them directly for this service.
The other group of health care providers operates somewhat differently. They’re employed in the branch office of a large multinational health conglomerate which requires its employees to recommend certain treatments which are most profitable to the company, so long as these treatments are considered to be “suitable.”
These might not be the best treatments, but under a set of very complicated regulations, these less-than-ideal prescriptions are deemed to be legally-defensible ways to address certain medical problems. These other health care providers are paid by the company according to how many of these treatments they can sell.
Now imagine that these larger companies, because of the very high profits they’re making on these treatments, are able to gain a lot of influence over the process that decides which treatments are “suitable.” In fact, their executives sit on the governing board of the organization that makes these determinations.
Finally, imagine that something went horribly wrong. Several of the most popular treatments that these non-fiduciary medical professionals were eagerly peddling to their “patients” were not at all as their companies had portrayed them. The result: catastrophic consequences, pain and suffering throughout the world. An enormous mess.
To bring the analogy back to the financial world, these terrible treatments (investments) actually DID bring the global economy to the brink of financial collapse, a mess that required our taxpayer money to fix. These companies had become so entwined in the system that the government had no choice but to help them recoup the staggering losses they brought upon themselves.
Not surprisingly, an outraged public demanded that this must never happen again. To the real fiduciary practitioners, the solution is obvious: require everybody to act in the best interests of their customers/clients by imposing a fiduciary standard. No more shady “suitable” treatments.
We were encouraged when Congress drafted legislation which, among other things, would bring every provider of financial advice under a fiduciary standard.
So here’s why professional financial services providers are angry. Now that the catastrophic global meltdown, TARP, massive losses in the stock market and the longest recession since the 1930s is beginning to fade from memory, those companies that provide “suitable” non-fiduciary advice have gone back to business as usual–and very quietly, a Senator from South Dakota has now inserted a provision into the reform bill saying that instead of imposing this fiduciary requirement, that instead Congress will “study” the issue.
The Senate has decided to leave fiduciary out of the final bill. Even the Wall Street Journal is outraged–here’s a link to a strongly-worded column that clearly explains what happened.
And here’s a link to another article [in Financial Planning magazine] which talks about how the legislative process favors the organizations that take the most money out of the pockets of their customers.
It would be nice if everybody called their Senator and Congressperson and said that they were just as angry as we are in the professional community. A groundswell of public opinion might make our elected representatives understand that we haven’t forgotten TARP and all the rest of it. Right now, the only people lobbying on your behalf are the professionals themselves, and there apparently aren’t enough of us to get the attention of the Congressional representatives who may be looking out for their own interests more than ours.
- This article is written by Bob Veres, publisher of Inside Information. Inside Information is a journal that keeps financial advisors on the cutting edge of industry news. We found this piece particularly relevant to the heated debate surrounding the fiduciary vs. suitability discussion.
