Sounds just like Suze!

  Our office has been mentoring or secretary for five years. She gradually learns the business by managing smaller accounts <$100,000. In approximately ten years she will be able to take over for one of us when retirement comes.

Granted we are Indy so her production does not matter. But you can teach book smarts but you cannot teach morals and ethics.

Two of the advisors in our office came out of ML and decided that ML way was no way to teach a new rep it is not fair to the rep or the clients.        

Unfortunately, the backside of this equation is the prevalence of shark mentality. Again the focus instead of on the welfare of the client is on the greed exhibited by the FA. As you state, morals and ethics come from within. They can however be stimulated through proper education.

The irony is that the most ethical and most moral in this business tend to also be the ones that are the must successful in the long run. Sure you find ego maniacal types that fleece better than any used car salesmen ever could, but how long do they last? They either burn out due to other aspects of their life are in line with this behavior (drug/alcohol abuse), or they get hauled away in handcuffs. The most common denominator is a walled in washed out effect that eventually occurs.

Their abrasive fleece now, worry about it later attitude eventually creates a drought of sustainable business. Sure they may be sitting on a nice book by then, but even this erodes as new reps come in and begin picking at their cadaverous account portfolio. Guys like this are good for maybe 5 years before they take a walk. They are also often struggling with their own finances as they reflect the uber stereotypes of the Nouveau Riche.

Very few of the Charismatic Crocodiles are still in the business after ten years. Educating at the collegiate level business ethics and illustrating case by case how those that are really to be admired amongst the financial elite continue to outproduce, outearn their counterparts in their chosen fields due to just that “their impeccable level of ethics and morals”.

You are right however. ML and the other established firms while possessing without a doubt highly skilled advisers, are suffering from what I call the PT Virus. PT stands for publicly traded. Any company that is listed on the exchanges becomes a slave to analyst projections, and short order window dressing to keep the restless natives (major shareholders) happy. Most Wall Street Firms are publicly traded and therefore during a financial crunch, can easily encourage a little corner cutting in regards to handling their recruits as well as their clients.

That is why I love to help my clients with the appropriate risk tolerance get into privately held companies (usually in the form of investment capital). That however is another story for another time.

Throwing the baby out with the bathwater is not an ideal way to handle the paradox. I think part of the standards process could be aided by a parallel to the Hippocratic oath. One that deals with ethically dealing with anyone who enlists our help.

I realize that what I find interesting may be very different from what another may think intriguing, but for my two cents worth I’d say we’ve beat this proverbial ‘minimum requirements’ horse to a pulp.  Good points made all around, even on the second and third re-statements. 

Reminds me of the old joke where the self-obsessed girl - out on a first date - finally finishes a long, detailed story of her life history, and then says to her semi-comatose date, "But enough of me talking about myself.  Why don’t YOU talk about me for a while?"

Or maybe I just drank too much eggnog this year … 

Morphius, you said what I (and pro bably a lot of others) was thinking. We all made our points. Time to put this thread to rest.