Read the full story by Tracey Longo on Financial Advisor Magazine.

Advisors who want to market themselves now that the Securities and Exchange Commission has given brokers “best interest” standing in clients’ eyes, need to start showing the advantages of working with a fiduciary while underscoring brokers’ weaknesses.

That’s the advice a panel of experts delivered yesterday during “Differentiation for RIAs in a Reg BI World”– a webinar that encouraged advisors to get a jump on marketing and branding now that the SEC is allowing brokers to tell clients that they provide advice that is in their “best interest”  without registering as fiduciary advisors.

The panel of fiduciary, marketing and public relations professionals all said they expect the new SEC rules to spur BDs to create new marketing, advertising and social media campaigns to blur the lines between advisors and brokers and aggressively target advisory clients.

“Brokers will be releasing an unprecedented amount of consumer education. Their tagline will be ‘our standard is best interest and it’s better than yours [advisors],’” said Knut Rostad, president of the Institute for the Fiduciary Standard, which hosted the webinar.

To compete in the new Reg BI world, Rostad said that advisors should:

• Step outside their comfort zone and re-engineer language regarding their philosophy, values, and what they do for clients;
• Discard legalese and hackneyed terms such as “best interest,” “suitability” and “putting investors first;”
• Start showing how and why the fiduciary standard is superior by highlighting practices of honesty, transparency and how they’re compensated;
• Speak out against brokers’ practices and conflicts of interest, particularly in the area of how they charge clients.

To read the full story, visit FA Magazine at the following link: https://www.fa-mag.com/news/advisors-warned–ramp-up-marketing-now-before-bds-roll-out–best-interest–campaigns-45481.html