Regulation and Compliance issues for Wealth Professionals can be challenging to navigate especially when the SEC is involved. Catch the latest news and analysis on compliance updates that impact financial advisors.
Training is everythingcauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education. Mark Twain To this famous quote brokerage firms might add: Financial advisors are but Avon salesmen transformed by their wirehouse-sponsored tutoring. Such is the...
I underwent a grueling arbitration hearing this year. The complainant's attorney claimed I'd acted in a fiduciary capacity by purchasing and allocating a variable annuity for my clients. I maintained I had no fiduciary responsibility but had...
Greener pastures await at another broker/dealer: I'm outta here. Adios. Sayonara. Kiss mywell, you get the idea. It's a heady moment when a rep leaves his firm. It also often sets in motion a series of showdowns over client ownership and...
Q: Recently I have been offered a forgivable loan as part of a transition package. I've taken loans before, but I've never seen one of the requirements in this one: forgiveness tied to production. It's a four-year loan, one-quarter of the loan...
It seems so trivial, just a turn of phrase: Can Series 7 stockbrokers bill themselves as financial advisors without getting a Series 66, the license that technically separates advisors from salesmen? Since 1999, brokers have been able to do just...
What, no more golf balls? No free fancy lunches? Dinner? No drinks? Financial advisors who grew accustomed to the little and sometimes not so little treats that mutual fund wholesalers lavish on them may have noticed a certain lack of swag lately...
A NASD proposal to require that reps with three or more formal complaints against them receive extra supervision from their firms elicited a hue and cry from major broker/dealers when it was first announced in late 2003. Both reps and their firms...
To virtually no one's surprise, regulators have begun scrutinizing how 529 plans are peddled. In December, the SEC and NASD sent a letter of inquiry to Edward Jones and American Funds, requesting information on how those firms sell the college...
Aclient of mine recently received the securities industry's equivalent of the black spot that pirate death summons made famous in Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island. The client reacted to the arrival of the NASD's Rule 8210 letter the same...
Q: In March 2003, I purchased $80,000 of Franklin New York Tax-Free A shares for my 70+-year-old client, who wanted to hold them long-term and was eligible for the $50,000 breakpoint. She didn't need the income (as evidenced by her reinvestment of...