New investment and savings products, some very complex, come out all the time. Advisors who don’t stay current about the best products for their clients are in danger of violating their fiduciary duties. Yet how can conscientious advisors keep up-to-date about all appropriate products and options, given the rapid pace of industry innovation and ingenuity?
“You can always count on the Wall Street marketing machine to come up with new—often expensive—products to scratch any little itch among savers and investors,” quipped Matt Radgowski, CEO of Halo Investing in Chicago. Some of these new products are actually useful, he acknowledged, but “the proliferation of so many nuanced funds and strategies, some not even publicly traded, makes it tough on advisors.”
That’s because today’s advisors wear many hats, he said, from retirement planning to investment management to client handholding and everything in between. “They are busy enough staying on top of the latest happenings in the financial planning world and what could be coming down the pike from our friends on Capitol Hill [that] learning the ins and outs of Wall Street’s latest flashy financial products is often simply not possible,” he said.