After five years and thousands of pages of commentary and analysis since the Obama Administration called for subjecting brokers to the fiduciary standard in June 2009, is there anything new? Recent developments, suggest the answer is “Yes.”
Fiduciary September, which the Institute for the Fiduciary Standard organizes, wound up last week having hosted 25 speakers in six events on topics ranging from restoring investor trust and fostering fiduciary best practices, to the state of fiduciary rule-making and awarding the Frankel Fiduciary Prize.
Arthur Levitt, Jack Bogle, Gary Gensler, Tamar Frankel and John Taft were among those who spoke. Additionally, TD Ameritrade’s 2014 Fiduciary Leadership Summit featured another dozen key experts on the status of the fiduciary standard in Washington.
The speakers at these events reaffirmed already-established views, but they also did more. They offered perspectives that may put current circumstances in a different light.
To see some of the media coverage, and listen to conference call recordings, we encourage you to visit the Institute’s Fiduciary September site.
Here are a few highlights.
Bogle offers advice to advisors
Jack Bogle spoke to Don McDonald in the inaugural podcast of “in Your Best Interest” about the concept and practice of “fiduciary” advice. “Being a fiduciary is the best road to investment success…fiduciary duty comes in (for fee-only advisors) guiding investors in staying in a long-term diversified portfolio.” Bogle also offers candid advice to advisers who are concerned that clients expect constant trading.
SIFMA, principal trading, full steam ahead
RBC Wealth Management’s head, John Taft, and SIFMA are already taking a victory lap. In a September 8th conference call, Taft (who noted he is the “architect” of the SIFMA position on a ‘uniform fiduciary standard’), aggressively advocated that principal trading is core to SIFMA’s vision of a broker’s fiduciary duties.
Under such a ‘uniform fiduciary’ rule-making, all RBC brokers would be deemed “SIFMA fiduciaries,” (aka, “the SIFMA standard”) and, it seems, no brokers would remain “brokers.” The upshot? A clear assertion, without a smidgeon of doubt, that a new SIFMA-envisioned standard that results from SEC rule-making would be effectively the same as the suitability standard applicable today.
SEC Chair White could get a strong fiduciary rule, if willing to take a 3-2 vote
In a September 4 conference call that included Dennis Kelleher of BetterMarkets, Barbara Roper of Consumer Federation of America, and David Certner of AARP, the case for proceeding with rule-making was vigorously advocated.