Fiduciary Rule

It’s time for professional planners, as opposed to sales agents, to define themselves accurately in the public mind. To do it, you need to use key words and phrases with crystal clarity.

The SEC found that auditing or testing would likely have revealed deficiencies in controls that allowed an employee access to client information at the wirehouse, says leading compliance expert Alan Foxman.

Our latest Industry Leadership Forum produced more questions than answers, but many participants expected changes in adviser compensation.

Some advisers may think the regulations won’t affect them. Here’s why they’re wrong.

Worthy ideas debated on the fiduciary rule, retirement prep and annuities.

“There are so many business models offering financial advice, it’s almost impossible for a layperson to distinguish between advice and sales,” a panelist says.

The group aims to provide planners with new technology focused on helping a firm become compliant, but it may cost them.

With retirement accounts being affected by the upcoming fiduciary rule, many advisers aren’t sure what their first step should be.

The president makes good on his vow to kill legislation that would roll back the new regulations on retirement plans.

The new regulations are “arbitrary and capricious," a trade organization asserts.

Converging movements – fiduciary, technological and demographic – mean new realities for how a planner will act like a professional.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, SIFMA, FSI and other groups are asking a Texas court to vacate the Labor Department's new regulations less than a year before the rule goes into effect.

The firm's relatively modest-sized army of advisers is more productive than any of its competitors. In 2015, the average Raymond James adviser produced $387,733, beating Cetera, its closest rival, by more than $56,000.

The industrywide gain in fee income is a welcome development given the new fiduciary rule--see how firms are preparing for new regulations as well as new competition.

The fiduciary rule flips wealth management on its head, especially in the bank channel. Smaller books will be just one response at Cetera.

The adviser's job is about to get harder, and some old dogs are going to have to learn new tricks in order to survive.

“The SEC is notorious for blowing through rule-making deadlines—both congressionally mandated and self-imposed, such as this,” says Micah Hauptman, financial services counsel at the Consumer Federation of America.

“The election could be disruptive to this rule,” Brian Hamburger predicted.

There is little to fear from the final version of the Department of Labor's regulation, planners say in a new survey.

Now that the sharply contested rule is the law of the land, a senior agency official says the department looks to help with compliance, not find targets to sue.