A first-of-its-kind website designed to match smaller investors with fiduciary advisors was launched Tuesday by four advisor groups with more than 5,000 registered investment advisors among them.
“We believe consumers should have a choice between a sales person who provides only incidental advice and a financial planner who provides real financial advice,” said Michael Kitces, co-founder of XY Planning Network.
In addition to XY Planning Network, the website, www.noincidentalinvestors.org, is being staffed by advisor members of the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (NAPFA), the Garrett Planning Network and the Institute for the Fiduciary Standard.
“Each investor who fills out a card on the website will get the name of two fiduciary advisors,” said institute President Knut Rostad, who spearheaded the new matchmaking service to serve the public and to debunk the claim, often repeated by regulators and lawmakers, that true fiduciary advice is only available to the wealthy.
“We’re launching in [Washington] D.C., but yes, we’d like to take this national,” Rostad told Financial Advisor magazine.
The website will also be used to educate the public about the benefits of working with a fiduciary advisor.
“Everyone should get real advice. Everyone. Real advice is fiduciary advice that is competent, objective and affordable,” a headline says on the website.
A growing body of evidence shows that investors earn better returns when working with a fiduciary advisor, according to Morningstar Director of Policy Aron Szapiro. “At Morningstar, we have examined the cost of conflicted advice and believe it can be around 0.50 percent annually in forgone returns and increased fees, although we don’t believe it is possible to extrapolate that data evenly to the whole retirement market,” Szapiro said.
While the institute is spearheading the project, “this is very much a group effort,” said Rostad, who encouraged fiducial advisors to join the ranks of the new group.
“What prompted this is we wanted to respond to criticism that small investors can’t get serviced by investment advisors. So I reached out to the three groups and said, ‘You already do this, so let’s give it emphasis and headlights,’” Rostad said.