Page 34 - Ready Set Retire

Stephen J. Kelley

You probably are involved in just such an arrangement. As I
mentioned before, only 8% to 12% of advisors have a fiduciary
responsibility to their clients. That means that somewhere
around 90% do not. What do you think the odds are you are
working with a fiduciary? Right...around 10%!

Note: under review is a Department of Labor ruling
designating that anyone working with retirement accounts is
working under a fiduciary standard. We don’t know if this
ruling will stand or not. Many of us believe that a 1,000-page
regulation effectively leaving up to the courts to define what a
fiduciary responsibility is, and relying on the courts for redress
and recompense is dangerous. In other countries where similar
laws have taken root various products have disappeared from
the market and huge swaths of the advisor community have
left the business. We believe in the fiduciary standard, and are
committed to it when advising anyone on their money, tax
qualified or not. However, our position is there is already a
fiduciary standard with 77 years of history behind it; why not
just use that? Especially because prior non-fiduciaries are now
operating under a fiduciary standard without the training or
preparation previously maintained through professional
fiduciaries.

In any event, people working with you on your qualified
retirement accounts are now held to a fiduciary standard,

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