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Recorded at the FSI OneVoice 2022 Presented by:
Advisorpedia interviewed Robin Traxler, SVP Policy and Deputy General Counsel at the Financial Services Institute, at the FSI OneVoice Conference in February, 2022.
"FSI has refocused our advocacy priorities to really react to the evolution of what's going on in the environment right now, both for the pandemic and just what clients expect from advisors.
For ensemble practices are our advocacy priority ensemble practices, you know, clients are expecting to go to an office and meet with a lot of different people and have that have a lot of different areas of expertise. And so working with the regulators to make it easier for these ensemble practices to get their payment of commissions to the practice, as opposed to the individual is an evolution that we saw happening even before the pandemic, since the pandemic, obviously, there's been a lot of virtual environment and Virtual Engagement, and clients are really expecting that. And so the regulations need to get up to date to really be able to allow advisors to meet the clients where they want to meet and, and communicate with them the way that they expect to be communicated with.
In 2022, FSI his advocacy priorities for the independent adviser are going to include working to protect to maintain their independent contractor status, so fighting against anything that would require them to become employees of their firms when they want to be independent.
Secondly, we have a lot of priorities that deal with improving their business and helping them to modernize the way that they interact with clients. So on that level, we're going to be working with the SEC to work to get them to allow for the payment of commissions to ensemble practices as opposed to individuals. Also, we're going to be working with the regulators to modernize, you know, the rules to really reflect the way that people do business right now. They're doing a lot of virtual business. They're meeting with clients virtually. What does that mean for the definition of a branch office?
And then lastly, working with the regulators to allow for virtual inspections of offices where it makes sense that you don't necessarily need to go in and inspect an office but you can do so virtually"
Resources: Financial Services Institute