When someone plans or invests, they either do it themselves or they hire someone to do it. If they hire someone to do it, either on an advisory basis or discretionary basis - they deserve honest advice and we deserve to be compensated in a visible, straight forward way. If they “go their own” they can go no-load or
"buy" mutual funds from us - if they buy from us they deserve our “suitability counsel” - we can tell them “this mutual fund acts like what you’re asking for”.

The growing “bank model” fits well with the “go it your own” framework but conflicts with the advice model.

loans - if I propose a mortgage re-fi, i can only offer my banks product - advice is limited to “us or no re-fi …or some version of the home team product.” If I could offer a wells, or BOA, of a JPM mortgage, then i would be adding advice similar to what I do in a fee-based wrap program - the commission thing would need to be modified to be consistent with fee-based comp, the the "home product’ mentality alone breaks the model.

lines of credit - when we wrap an investment account with a line of credit - we DRAMATICALLY up the risk. We up the risk essentially by the same amount that we LOWER risk by adding bonds. The internal systems don’t even MEASURE this change in risk, and in our annual investment reviews, compliance doesn’t check to see if we’re even explaining this. Also, signiificantly, ENVISION et al does not incorporate this risk in the plans - can you imagine if ENVISION discarded the risk reduction of alternatives and bonds? No one would use it! So here again, the bank product significantly conflicts with the advice based model.

Management incentive currently prioritize a) lending, b) fee-based, c) planning, and two other criteria I haven’t figured out. We have bank priorities, with the risks outlined above - determining who is “premiere”. Put it all together and we have bank leadership, leveraging our relationships based on trust - to distribute their products in a way that runs counter to the reason clients engage us in the first place.

I have serious concerns. Peace out.