Why Ambassador Works as a Fiduciary Advisor Only
Unfortunately, many people do not know who is advising them.
According to the American College of Financial Services [source], nearly 1 out of 2 people were unaware or indifferent if their advisor was a fiduciary [term] or not.
Whether your advisor is a fiduciary or not makes a big difference in how that advisor works with you.
Fiduciary Is the Standard for Advisors Who Care about Relationships
Fiduciary advisors can choose to work with clients in one of two ways.
- Advisors working as a fiduciary to put their clients’ best interests ahead of their own.
- Advisors under a fiduciary standard seek to understand the full picture of their clients and base their advice on it. Clients expect advice to consider their unique goals and situations and implemented at a reasonable cost. The advisor receives no extra compensation if a client chooses one product over another.
Suitability Enables Broker-Advisors to Sell You Products
In contrast, suitability [term] places much less emphasis on relationship and more on a product. In other words, can an advisor justify selling a client a product?
Under suitability, advisors can act more like brokers (or salespeople) than trusted advisors. They simply need to show that a recommended investment is “suitable” for a given client. There is much less emphasis on the client’s total financial picture. Instead, products are allowed to be sold to clients so long as they are deemed not to harm their clients’ goals and circumstances. “Suitability” permits those advisors to earn commissions on their product sales.
Ambassador Is a Fee-Only Fiduciary Trusted Advisor
Our approach at Ambassador is to focus on clients’ total picture (financial and personal priorities). We are passionate about our clients’ success. We seek to help you to the best of our abilities.
Yet, we are indifferent as to the solutions that might help our clients. We do not make more or less money based on one solution versus another.
This is why we have chosen not to sell any commission-based products. We prefer to care for our clients proactively by minimizing potential conflicts of interest.
There are other ways we strive to go beyond a minimum fiduciary standard.
Sometimes, our loyalty to our clients might even cost us potential further business.
For instance, there have been times when we have advised some clients not to invest additional money with us in order to pay down debt. We thought it would be better for these clients to reduce their cash outflows to a manageable level before investing more funds. Our concern for our clients’ well-being outweighs the opportunity for earning additional revenue.
Other situations might arise where a prospective client might want to work with us, yet we believe it is in their best interests to go elsewhere.
Learn more about what makes us stand out in caring for clients like you.