Fiduciary standard accounts full#

Wall Street, predictably, is spending millions of dollars on lobbying to defeat any form of fiduciary standard.

And fortunately, in Washington, there are currently proposals being suggested by the Department of Labor (DOL) and the Chair of the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) to potentially require this change.

Fiduciary standard accounts full#

We believe everyone deserves full fiduciary service, not just Wealthfront clients. But in the investment world, millions accept “suitable” advice and collectively, investors are losing $17 billion each year as per the recent report from the United States Council of Economic Advisors.

When you get sick, you want the absolute best medicine available and the law requires this. Imagine if your doctor only had to adhere to a “suitability” standard and could recommend medicine that paid a kickback. Often, that means sub-standard investments that pay kickbacks to the broker for recommending them. As an SEC-registered investment advisor, Wealthfront assumes the full fiduciary standard of service for our clients, meaning we always have to act in their best interests and deliver the best possible service we can, with no conflicts of interest.īut hundreds of thousands of stock brokers only are required by law to follow a weaker “suitability” standard, meaning they can recommend any investment that is potentially appropriate, and not necessarily the one that is best. You’d think that all investment advisors would adhere to this fiduciary duty.Ĭurrent SEC regulations allow for investment advisors to operate under one of two standards. On Wall Street, there’s a word for that: fiduciary. If you come visit our offices in Palo Alto, you’ll see a giant chalk wall in the back of the office reminding us of this.Īll the ideas center around one thing: doing the best possible thing for our clients. It’s why I signed up as a Wealthfront client when it launched, why I joined the company two years ago, and what inspires me and my colleagues to come to work each day. A teacher making $50,000 a year deserves the same high-quality investment service as an institution managing $500 million. And contrary to a large majority of the industry, we always put our clients first. Wealthfront was founded on a simple vision: that every investor, large and small, deserves sophisticated financial advice.