Juggling Dynamite

Article today You Deserve a better Financial Advisor,  points out the outrageously low licensing requirements to become a sell side ‘financial advisor’.  In Canada and the US candidates are required to pass a three hour exam that covers a cross-section of law and investment-related subjects–a task most can manage in just a few weeks of self-study.

The author rightly declares this woefully inadequate and dangerous to the public:

Compare this laughably low bar with the prerequisites to practice medicine, law or accounting. Each of these professions requires formal education, a famously rigorous licensing exam, and then continuing education — none of which is required of investment advisers. My guess is that very few people would trust a doctor, lawyer or accountant whose only credential is passing a three-hour exam. So why aren’t we demanding more of financial advisers?

Advisers have the power to profoundly improve lives by encouraging saving and responsible investment. But like other professionals, they also have the power to do great harm, as we are reliably reminded every few years in the media or the courts with a fresh variation on the financial scandal theme…

It’s time for financial advisers to join the family of professions in substance, and not just in name. We should require that aspiring advisers complete a minimum amount of undergraduate or graduate-level coursework in finance, accounting, or economics, and pass a multi-day comprehensive exam…

Advisers should also be bound by a code of ethics that aims higher than what current regulations mandate. Given the ever-increasing pace of financial innovation, continuing education should simply be mandatory for maintaining a license.

But these suggestions, while all fine, miss the main problem which cannot be corrected by more education alone:  financial sales representatives are allowed to talk and market themselves as professionals while conducting themselves in the best interests of their profits above all else.  Indeed, the industry continues to lobby tooth and nail every day to duck the legal fiduciary duty that requires professionals offering advice to place the best interests of their clients ahead of all other considerations.

Doctors, lawyers and accountants all have accepted a fiduciary duty of care to the patients/clients they are advising.  The financial sales business markets itself as a profession while rejecting the mantel of liability and duty that comes with a patient/client’s vulnerability to those they rely on for advice.  This is indefensible, immoral and the real reason that harmful financial advice is so systemic and damaging today.

It’s long past time, to hold everyone calling themselves a financial or investment ‘advisor’ to a fiduciary standard. A civil society simply cannot afford to have it any other way.

On human rights and equality, North America leaves many countries in the dark ages in comparison, and still females in power and policy positions in business here remain outrageously under-represented, with little progress for years now.

And it’s not for lack of excellent, equally qualified and interested female candidates. We are half of the population after all, and women have been making up half of post-secondary and post-graduate students for many years now.  The divergence happens in career opportunity, income and experience thereafter.

Yes women are, so far at least, the only sex who can birth children; but barring illness or complication, most work ably right up to their due dates.  Child-rearing duties can definitely be a career challenging area–especially for women.  Yet how they are managed often has much to do with the willingness of fathers to share equally in day to day parenting duties of their kids as well.

Many dads today are, or would like to be, equally involved in raising their children where financial responsibilities, career norms and peer tolerance permits it.  Too often still, disproportionate child rearing duties default to moms less by equal choices between parents, but because women are systemically earning less than men–even for equal work–and are offered less opportunity to advance, so family financial prospects fall disproportionately on fathers.  This makes less choice for both sexes and leads to a society where duties are decided more by biology than individual merit, talent and ability.  In this, we all lose.

In business today, inequality is a self-fulfilling cultural issue, where intentionally or not, those in power seats tend to reach out to those with similar personal attributes and experience to their own. Since most are males who are not sharing equal parenting duties for their children, they tend to offer the best career opportunities to other males who are also not expecting to fulfill equal parenting duties for their children. This perpetuates the problem and tends to limit career paths, attitudes and work-life balance options for women–but also for men.

Those who think equality in the work place has been solved or is a non-issue, tend to be those who are either content with the current status quo, or who have not yet tried to step outside the established male/female roles and careers. It takes awareness, thinking and intentional effort from those both inside and outside of privileged classes in order for social evolution to succeed.  But the collective has much to gain on all fronts, when it does.

Not enough #women breaking glass ceiling. See % of female board members in yr country https://t.co/9LxczqC7jM #IWD pic.twitter.com/CYdKa6dNip

— OECD Social (@OECD_Social) March 8, 2016

Retooling and retraining oil and gas workers to refit and roll out the renewable energy infrastructure globally is the obvious solution. Good, strong, healthy, efficient growth opportunities are all around us. But people have to see it and want to evolve.  Looking backwards is a dead end.

When the oil industry is booming, everyone in West Texas benefits. But when oil prices go bust, the cheap gas comes with a human cost. An estimated 76,000 oil workers have lost their jobs in Texas and that has a domino effect in many communities. Here is a direct video link.