Close Close
Sign In
Newsletters
Popular Financial Topics Discover relevant content from across the suite of ALM legal publications From the Industry More content from ThinkAdvisor and select sponsors Investment Advisor Issue Gallery Read digital editions of Investment Advisor Magazine Tax Facts Get clear, current, and reliable answers to pressing tax questions
Luminaries Awards
Podcast Center Video Center Webcasts Resource Center Events
About ThinkAdvisor Contact Us Advertise With Us Asset & Logo Licensing Sitemap Terms of Service Privacy Policy Copyright © 2024 ALM Global, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
ThinkAdvisor

Financial Planning > Behavioral Finance

NAPFA voices support for fiduciary oversight

By Andy Stonehouse

X
Your article was successfully shared with the contacts you provided.

Adding its voice to several other organizations, the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors also leant its support to provisions in the new Investor Protection Act of 2009 which would subject all those who provide investment advice to a fiduciary level of care.

In a letter sent July 14 to Reps. Barney Frank (D-MA) and Spencer Bachus (R-AL), Chairman and Ranking Member of the House Financial Services Committee, NAPFA joined the CFP board, the Financial Planning Association, the Consumer Federation of America and the North American Securities Administrators Association, all supporting the bill but encouraging revisions to push for more fiduciary duty.

“We believe revisions will be needed to unambiguously provide for the extension of the overarching fiduciary duty that investment advisors owe their clients under the Advisers Act, to brokers and others who provide investment advice, that this fiduciary duty is explicitly recognized in law, and that the legislation does not in any way undermine the fiduciary duty that already exists under the Act,” the letter states.

NAPFA and the Financial Planning Coalition seek the establishment of a professional oversight board for the financial planners and advisors who provide broad-based financial planning or advisory services to consumers, and those who hold themselves out as financial planners or advisors. The oversight board would establish baseline competency standards and would require that financial planners adhere to the fiduciary standard of care.

“Consumers must be able to realistically judge whether or not a financial advisor is going to act in their best interests,” says NAPFA chair Diahann W. Lassus, CFP, CPA. “A fiduciary standard helps ‘pull back the curtain’ and reveals to consumers who will work for them.”

NOT FOR REPRINT

© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.