Twenty years ago I naively stumbled into the investment ‘business’ on the broker/dealer side of a bank owned financial conglomerate. It was a shocking, repugnant, dishonorable, client-abusive business model to work in. And has only gotten more self-serving, conflicted and corrupt since.
If you are still taking your investment, retirement, financial advice and management from the companies that are paid to sell products and get you into more risk so they can make more fees, then you are doing yourself and your family a great disservice.
The ‘cross-sell’ of high fee products to gullible/greedy/unsuspecting clients is the holly grail of financial firm profits. This detailed investigative report on JP Morgan is well worth reading. See: Private Banking meets cross-selling for JP Morgan’s wealthy clients.
If you think (or hope) that your investment/dealer/broker firm is different, you are deluding yourself.
The only rule that posed a serious threat to the financial cartel was the incoming ‘fiduciary standard’ that the Labor Department had set to take effect in April, requiring ‘advisers’ to place the best interests of their clients ahead of firm profits. But now the new Trump administration has frozen its enactment, and is said to be working on a permanent roll back. If this happens it will be a clear indication that the self-enriching, finance cartel is still running the government under Trump, as it is in most other countries today.
“Disclosure goes only so far. Clients shouldn’t have to worry that their bank can screw them because somewhere in a large offering document it says the bank can screw them.”
–Philip Aidikoff, securities lawyer representing a client in an arbitration against JPMorgan over an alleged breach of fiduciary duty
