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Fiduciary duty

Regulation and Compliance > Federal Regulation

Clients Come First: In Support of a Fiduciary Standard

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What You Need to Know

  • The Investment Advisers Act of 1940 required investment advisers to be fiduciaries to their clients.
  • The Labor Department completed the first version of its fiduciary rule in 2016, but it was vacated in 2018.
  • A second version of the 2016 rule has been filed with OMB for review, expected to be completed by the end of 2023.
  • On June 30, 2020, the Secuirites and Exchange Commission's Regulation Best Interest (Reg BI) went into effect.

The world would be a much better place if fiduciary was the law of the land as much as the standard by which financial advisors and the financial industry were judged. Although there are objections by product companies, by no means should the Labor Department drop its fiduciary rule project.

Two Issues That Require Reframing

Opponents to the fiduciary rule cherry-pick problematic areas for the brokerage community, arguing that the rule would be unfair to advisors and salespeople who sell the products that big companies make. That should not be the issue here. The issue should be, how can consumers be best served? That’s what a fiduciary standard does, requiring advisors to place clients’ interests ahead of their own.

Additionally, although the fiduciary standard is clearly a consumer issue, it is frequently presented as an issue that divides advisors. But there’s an elephant hiding in the room, as pink as can be. Not to mention a naked emperor always dressed in new clothes. Both the emperor and the elephant are the financial services industry, the product companies, with the resources to rival any industry (and most countries) and to dominate the media of financial advice. 

Why would financial institutions not want their advisors to be fiduciaries for their consumers? Because they themselves are not fiduciaries. Putting their own interests ahead of consumers works well for their profits, they think. It is a terrible system for consumers, however, and it’s time for the financial world to do the right thing for society by putting the interests of consumers first. 

Three Marks of a Fiduciary Financial Advisor

Over the past 50 years, professional organizations have developed the following three professional characteristics of a fiduciary financial advisor:

  • Relationship-based listening skills of life planning: Through authenticity, empathy and inspiration, these deliver the trust to financial relationships that enables clients to articulate and then accomplish their most powerful, purpose-driven lives.
  • Comprehensive financial planning: This addresses all financial aspects of a client’s life, as opposed to single-focused product solutions.
  • Fee-only advice: This allows compensation entirely separate from product sales and revenues, thus minimizing conflicts of interest.

Advisor Qualifications for a Fiduciary Standard

You can occasionally find a fiduciary advisor who has none of the following qualifications, but it is rare. Two out of the three qualifications will often produce a fiduciary, but the gold standard would be a combination of all three:

  1. Certified Financial Planner designation
  2. Registered Life Planner designation
  3. For fee-only advice, the professional associations:
    • The National Association of Personal Financial Advisors
    • Garrett Planning Network
    • The Alliance of Comprehensive Planners
    • XY Planning Network

Some suggest that the fiduciary rule would rob consumers of their choice of preferred financial advisor. But why would a consumer, offered the choice, ever want less than these three marks of a fiduciary?

Comprehensive fiduciary relationships across the industry will bring trust and professionalism to financial services and a population of consumers filled with entrepreneurial energy and confidence that the money world is working for them.

The best-interest standard promoted by product companies and their sales organizations isn’t fiduciary. It does not ensure that the clients’ interests come first; rather, a brokerage firm’s fiduciary obligation is to its shareholders. And rather than a simple fee from their client, these firms receive not only commissions but also many other lines of revenue derived from their product transactions. 

Moreover, an advisor’s compensation is often tied not to the consumer’s best interest, but to quotas and sales contests. Although disclosure may be required, how many consumers read or understand the implications of disclosure documentation?

Advisors held to the fiduciary standard provide a significantly higher level of care. It would be much simpler and better for all concerned if there was just one financial advice standard, a fiduciary standard of care, rather than the 770-page Regulation Best Interest.

Fiduciary Economics for Consumers

The benefits of fiduciary far outweigh its costs, and the benefits for the underserved outweigh all others. The most important foundation for making proper financial decisions is advice relationships we can trust, fiduciary relationships. 

Thanks to compounding, the first $5,000 that people invest will have far more impact on their future than any similar future investment. And it’s often 100% of their net worth — talk about the importance of trust! Getting it right in terms of their aspirations, financial choices and financial relationships will give them skill and confidence in navigating the world. It will also lead to a far more efficient allocation of human resources than any systems we currently use.

I used to provide comprehensive financial life planning for clients on disability and for others of little means in yearly, hour-long sessions. I’m sure I could have been more efficient at it, and a fiduciary rule would streamline this. It would create the market necessary for advisors dedicated to serving the middle market to create the right service at the right price. 

By not being fiduciaries to their consumers, financial product companies polarize the financial advice profession. It’s time, instead, they joined with the fiduciaries in the CFP, fee-only and life-planning arenas to design exceptional and cost-efficient approaches that deliver genuine fiduciary care. A solid fiduciary standard would clarify what fair compensation is for financial advisors and how to deliver it, rather than raising questions about what it is to be fairly compensated for their services. 

Toward a Fiduciary Culture

Let’s go one step further. Fiduciary is all about how we want our humanity to be expressed through our institutions, a global issue with global value. By speaking out in support of a fiduciary standard, we have an opportunity to be leaders within the financial services industry. What would it mean if not merely their advisors, but if all financial companies became fiduciaries to humanity, trustworthy in all things?

Imagine if banks and insurance companies that have so much power to do good were determined to do nothing but good and became a model for all other industries. Imagine if insurance companies only provided services for other companies who were fiduciary, and banks only loaned money to other companies that were fiduciary in all things.

Finally, imagine that that movement grew because these financial services companies were only doing work with fiduciary companies themselves. What an incredible world that would be.

It is time to make the fiduciary standard the law of the land, not merely something that distinguishes brokers from investment advisors. 


George Kinder is founder of the Kinder Institute of Life Planning, which has trained financial advisors from 30 countries in the listening skills that place clients’ interests first.


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