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Kodydogg

FINALLY, some clarity is starting to come to my beloved profession. As a TRUE financial planner I left a career contract position with a global financial services company 3 years ago to become an independent precisely because of the "two hats" approach that nearly EVERY broker dealer uses. You are a fiduciary when you are providing a plan, but you must tell the client that when it comes to implementation of that plan (where the product sales occur) you are taking off the planner "hat" and putting on your "registered representative" hat, and the accompanying lower standard of care; only most of my colleagues really underplayed the signifigance of that last point. It is this accepted approach that would allow a company to push it's proprietary mutual funds or insurance products even though the planner had access to a wide variety of options. At least State Farm is very straight forward, their agents cannot offer anything other than State Farm products. All of the big broker dealers have ...(Read more of this comment)their own mutual funds and/or insurance companies but often under a different name and with little to no disclosure to the client. If the registered rep wants his b/d to provide health insurance or access to professional development programs, they have to meet production quotas of proprietary products. Where is the objectivity in that?!?(Show less of this comment)