A new way to promote visibility for a fiduciary standard?

Author: Michael Kitces

Team Kitces

Michael Kitces is Head of Planning Strategy at Buckingham Strategic Wealth, which provides an evidence-based approach to private wealth management for near- and current retirees, and Buckingham Strategic Partners, a turnkey wealth management services provider supporting thousands of independent financial advisors through the scaling phase of growth.

In addition, he is a co-founder of the XY Planning Network, AdvicePay, fpPathfinder, and New Planner Recruiting, the former Practitioner Editor of the Journal of Financial Planning, the host of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, and the publisher of the popular financial planning industry blog Nerd’s Eye View through his website Kitces.com, dedicated to advancing knowledge in financial planning. In 2010, Michael was recognized with one of the FPA’s “Heart of Financial Planning” awards for his dedication and work in advancing the profession.

Read all of Michael’s articles here.

As described on their website, the focus of Change.org is "a citizen-driven project that aims to identify and create momentum around the best ideas for how the Obama Administration and 111th Congress can turn the broad call for 'change' across the country into specific policies." In classic Democratic fashion, anyone can register with the site to submit an idea, or comment and vote on the ideas of others. The top 10 rated ideas across the website will be presented to the Obama Administration on Inauguration Day. Some suggest that the Obama Administration, which has publicly acknowledged and supported Change.org, is already monitoring many of the top vote and comment entries on the site.

Of course, there are many nuances and issues involved with practically implementing a wide-reaching fiduciary standard for financial advice, but the point here is not to hammer out the details. It is simply to bring visibility to the issue, so that subsequent specific policies for implementation could be created. In a world where so much change in Congress is controlled by lobbyists - and where organizations like the FPA are still outspent upwards of 100:1 - is Change.org a way to help initiate consumer-oriented, anti-status-quo changes like a fiduciary standard for all financial advice?

Ultimately, though, Veres' entry on Change.org will need more votes if it is going to really gain visibility and advance to the next round. Nonetheless, it represents an intriguing new approach to promote the idea of fiduciary financial advice. If you're interested in seeing it progress further, consider going to the website yourself and registering so that you can vote and leave a comment. You can see the Veres entry itself by clicking here.