When a new client asked Charles Ryan to sign a template of a fiduciary oath she’d pulled off the internet two years ago, the certified financial planner happily obliged without blinking an eye.

“I'm absolutely all for anything that helps move the needle forward a little bit more towards the universal fiduciary standard,” Ryan told Financial Advisor magazine.

That includes being a Best Practices Advisor.

“I encourage potential clients who cold call me by phone to shop around,” said Ryan, whose advisory practice, Atlantic Financial Planning, is headquartered in Annapolis, Md. “I explain that there's a difference between a fiduciary standard and a suitability standard and to ensure that they ask financial advisors which standard they're working under.”

Ryan is among 25 financial advisors who took part in the Institute for the Fiduciary Standard’s first class of Best Practices Advisors. The group was unveiled last Thursday March 23 at Envestnet offices on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. “The requirements are very straightforward and they're very serious,” said  Knut A. Rostad, founder and president of the Institute for the Fiduciary Standard.

“There is no classroom participation. Best Practices Advisors agree to post the best practices on their website and tell their prospective and current clients that this is how they do business.”

Rostad lead the unveiling along with Brian Hamburger, CEO of MarketCounsel, and personal finance journalist Jane Bryant Quinn.

“Fiduciaries disclose all fees including the fees associated with investment recommendations,” Quinn said. “They should have few or no conflicts. For any unavoidable conflicts, they should disclose it in full and explain what it means.”

Vanguard founder John C. Bogle participated in the session by phone.

“Our advisory industry is so filled with disclosures that for an ordinary investor it's often impossible to know what they mean. So we have tried to democratize access to understanding being a fiduciary so that an investor doesn't need to hire an attorney for interpretation,” said Rostad.

Abacus Planning Group is on the Chairman’s Council that created the Best Practices for the Institute of the Fiduciary Standard. “These Best Practices summarize better than anything I've seen the way that we want to show up in the world as financial professionals,” said Abacus’ Jon Robertson, a financial advisor in Columbia, S.C. who is also among the first class of Best Practices Advisors. “There are many advisors out there where it might be a little bit of a reach for them to be able to say that they do all of these Best Practices but there’s plenty of time for advisors to change their practices to fully embody these affirmations.”

The first of the Institute's proposed 12 practices calls for advisors to affirm the fiduciary standard under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 and, if applicable, ERISA and the Department of Labor’s Conflicts of Interest rule, govern all professional advisory client relationships at all times.

“This means that as advisors we have a fiduciary relationship to our clients all the time,” said Daniel B. Moisand, a CFP and Best Practices Advisor at Moisand, Fitzgerald, Tamayo, an RIA in Melbourne Fla. “We never switch hats. That's the bottom line. That's what clients want even if they don't know the term that they're supposed to use in a legal environment to describe it.”

Another of the Best Practices is to give a good faith estimate of all costs involved.

“Most advisors who are full-time fiduciaries won't have to do a whole lot of things radically different if they become a Best Practice Advisor,” Moisand said. “They’ll just need to get a little more precise in their documentation of assessment of costs.”

The second class of Best Practices advisors is reportedly lining up to be announced by the summer.

"Best Practices advisors, like other respected professionals, do more for their clients,” Rostad said. “They meet rigorous and concrete standards. They publicly and plainly demonstrate to investors and regulators what they do for clients. They demonstrate how fiduciary duties are translated into tasks and deeds that investors understand and value.”