The Institute for the Fiduciary Standard

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Knut Rostad puts fiduciary advice up against best-interest standards

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This interview between Knut Rostad and Jeff Benjamin appeared on InvestmentNews.

Episode Summary

Jeff takes Knut Rostad of The Institute for the Fiduciary Standard deep into the weeds and back in a discussion designed to untangle the endless regulatory wrangling over whether brokers or advisers have the better standard of practice. Do consumers even understand or care about so much inside baseball? Or is this whole debate just an attempt to leverage a marketing advantage?

Episode Notes

In this episode, you’ll hear about: 

  • What exactly is investor confusion.
  • How the SEC specifically deals with retail investors and regulation.
  • How we got to the SEC’s Reg BI and Form CRS in June 2019.

Guest Bio:

Knut A. Rostad is the co-founder and president of the Institute for the Fiduciary Standard, a nonprofit formed in 2011 to advance fiduciary principles and practices in investment advice and financial planning through research, education and advocacy. Previously, Rostad served as the regulatory and compliance officer at Rembert Pendleton Jackson, an investment adviser in Falls Church, Virginia.

The Institute for the Fiduciary Standard offers guidance on fiduciary and why it matters. Rostad has authored articles, papers and comment letters to the SEC and DOL, and is cited in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Reuters and industry outlets. IA Magazine’s ‘IA 25’ list in 2014, “the most influential people in and around the advisor industry” named Rostad.

Rostad is the editor of The Man in the Arena: Vanguard Founder John C. Bogle and His Lifelong Battle to Serve Investors First, by Wiley. His BA in Political Science is from the University of Vermont and an MBA from the Norwegian School of Management in Oslo.

Dan Moisand

 

Dan Moisand is a nationally recognized fiduciary fee-only financial planner, an Institute Real Fiduciary™ Advisor and Chair-elect of the CFP Board.

The Institute has enshrined the ‘Moisand Rule’ on fiduciary practices. It is basic and is more important today than ever: “You have to avoid conflicts. If I avoid a conflict, I don’t worry about it.”

Watch the video of Moisand speaking here.

Bob Veres

 

Bob Veres is a long term observer of financial planning. His Newsletter, “Inside information” Is a staple of leading planners. In the May edition he writes about fiduciary and the Institute.

"But a much bigger point is that the fiduciary standard—as Knut Rostad of the Institute for the Fiduciary Standard has pointed out—has been determined by the Supreme Court (1963 ruling) to be at the very heart of the Investment Advisers Act of 1940. It is the foundation of what it means to be an RIA registered with the SEC instead of a tipster or a tout."

- Bob Veres, Parting Thoughts ... The SEC's Own Compliance Culture