Skip to main content

Diigo Home

Your Money - Choosing a Financial Planner in an Age of Bad Behavior - NYTimes.... - The Diigo Meta page

www.nytimes.com/...06money.html - Cached

Sorry, this URL cannot be previewed here. Visit the URL directly.

This link has been bookmarked by 1 people . It was first bookmarked on 07 Jun 2009, by Matt Kramer.

  • 07 Jun 09
    mattkramer
    Matt Kramer

    Finding Financial Advice in an Age of Bad Behavior
    By RON LIEBER

    The reports about crooked behavior in the world of financial planning just keep getting worse.

    On May 20, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed an emergency civil action accusing James Putman and another employee of Wealth Management in Appleton, Wis., of taking $1.24 million each in kickbacks related to certain investments they were making for clients.

    The S.E.C. also accused the pair of fraudulent conduct relating to how they allocated $102 million in client funds, much of which now appears to be gone.

    Given the unfortunate prevalence of this sort of behavior, the charges would not be headline news were it not that Mr. Putman is a past president of the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors. Napfa is an organization of financial advisers that make money only through fees that clients pay directly to them.

    For some time now, Napfa and its leadership have loudly criticized other financial professionals who accept commissions and fees from insurance companies and mutual fund firms. Napfa’s thinking is that those professionals are more beholden to the companies that pay them than they are to the individual investors whom they are supposed to be serving. The association has also promoted its adherence to a “fiduciary” standard, where members act only in a client’s best interests. Other financial professionals often only agree to do what is “suitable.”

    That Mr. Putman is in trouble is embarrassing enough for the group, given its high and mighty stance on most consumer and regulatory issues. But it also comes right on the heels of charges against two other members, Matt Weitzman and Julie Jarvis.

    My wife and I were clients of Mr. Weitzman, and I wrote about my discovery of the accusations against him in an April column. (It’s linked from the version of this story at nytimes.com/yourmoney.) After the article ran, a number of people wrote in or posted comments online criticizing my judgment, opinions and qualifications to write t

    economics

Top Tags