What Is a Fiduciary?

Here’s a really important point we find a lot of investors have not heard enough about. Fiduciary advisors like Camarda have a legal obligation to put your best interests first on all investments. Advisors at banks, brokers, insurance companies, and many financial planners don’t. In fact, for them it’s perfectly ok to maximize their profits even if you do much worse. Most investors don’t know this because of misleading marketing implying these other advisors put you first – their advertising and sales pitches say one thing, but their lawyers say something different if you go after them – and lots and lots of investors do. The government estimates this situation costs uninformed investors almost $20B per year in lost wealth. That’s twenty billion a year in consumers financial security burned on the fire of commissions and bad advice. So this is a big question for investors – do you want an advisor who actually puts you first, or one that just says that, but does something different? This difference in advisors is really profound. Typical advisors are really commission salespeople, and their job is to make money for themselves, and for their employers – not for thier clients! They don’t have to put your interests always first, and don’t need to have any training beyond the basic licenses which can only take a few weeks, even for the “full service stockbroker” Series 7. With these folks, their firm comes first, their commissions come second, and clients come last. Big commissions and fees are often buried in stacks of fine print and incredibly hard to find, but they are ok and legal even when investors do much worse. The relationship with you is more like a salesperson at a car dealer – not a trusted advisor like a doctor or lawyer or CPA…or a Camarda advisor. If you think you might be exposed to this sort of advisors in some of your accounts ,contact us for a free Portfolio Stress Test, and we’ll smoke it out for you.