Jimmy Carter passed away at age 100 on December 29th.
Carter’s passing, 44 years after his presidency, has caused an unprecedented outpouring of gratitude. An outpouring that is arguably due to the fiduciary bona fides Carter lived by. The tribute will climax January 9 with a state funeral in Washington DC.
The 39th president was a public fiduciary and his experiences offer lessons for fiduciary advisers.
Carter’s fiduciary ethic was central to his campaigns for president and human rights and how he thought and acted. The public embraced Carter because he was viewed as candid and honest. Fiduciary advisers can similarly conduct themselves, demonstrating what a fiduciary ‘best interest’ standard means.
Carter entered national politics in 1974 when the nation was exhausted from presidential distrust and tragedy. Two presidents left scars. Nixon for Watergate and Johnson for Vietnam. Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King assassinations were still fresh. Carter, a farmer and former governor, offered a fresh breath.
The Carter presidency is viewed as a mixed, along partisan lines. The Carter post presidency is deemed exemplary by the world. Gunnar Berge of the Norwegian Nobel Committee said in his 2002 presentation of the peace prize, that he “Was certainly the best ex-president the country ever had.”
The press and public outpouring in 2024 is no surprise. The public admires a life well-lived serving the public interest. Carter started in the Navy as a nuclear engineer in 1946 and then worked for 78 years until he died. For eight years Carter served as governor or president. For the remaining 90% of his career Carter pursued other passions.
Carter’s post presidency “retirement” is a model. Carter did what he believed important and right with Rosalynn at this side. He did so with discipline and energy to serve his family, faith, community and world. At his core Jimmy Carter was a public fiduciary.
Carter’s lofty spirit recalls Justice Benjamin Cardozo’s words, when he wrote in 1928 about fiduciary duty as “Something stricter than the morals of the marketplace. Not honesty alone, but the punctilio of an honor most sensitive, is then the standard of behavior.”
Cardozo’s words are poetic. Attorney James W. Watkins explains how they become real, “RIAs are fiduciaries by law, required to always act in the best interest of their clients.” This means, “Fiduciaries are held to an extremely high standard”, with duties of loyalty, putting clients first …”.
An “extremely high standard” is an extraordinary feat and honesty is the gold medal. Gallup measures consumer views of “honesty and ethical standards” of occupations. 2023 data show that nurses, engineers and vets are tops with 78%, 65% and 60% rankings for high honesty and ethics.
Meanwhile, stockbrokers and car salespeople are among the lowest ranked occupations at 12% and 8%.
Nurses have been first for 22 years. A nursing group explains, “Honesty is one of the primary traits of nurses. They are honest in their words and actions. … They want patients to know the facts.”
Fiduciary spirit and duties thrive in the hearts and practices of thousands of fiduciary advisers. Consumers should be thankful. Against the odds, fiduciary advisers have persevered and are rightly proud to have adopted this “extremely high standard” as their North Star to serve clients.
Yet, most fiduciary advisers do not effectively communicate what they do to meet this extremely high standard. That is, they do not communicate or explain what it means to be like an Olympic medalist, college football champion team or meet the highest academic standard.
That is they do not talk about what fiduciaries do differently from non-fiduciaries. For the most part adviser communications remain associated with the legal compliance standard or what financial planning means. Legal compliance is important, of course. Communications can address what it means to clients to meet the extremely high ethical fiduciary standard.
Granted, communicating excellence as a professional is not easy. Yet, it is essential.
The regulatory environment for fiduciary advisers makes it challenging. Over the past twenty years, the industry and some regulators have claimed that fiduciary and fee-only practices are not really a higher standard at all. They claim that sales brokers and fiduciary advisers are much the same.
These claims defy history, law, facts and common sense. They defy the higher fiduciary standard emblazoned in the Investment Advisers Act and affirmed by the Supreme Court.
Jimmy Carter was an unabashed public fiduciary. Carter demonstrated fiduciary loyalty, honesty and transparency at an extremely high standard. Fiduciary advisers can learn from what Carter did.
