There is a "financial advisor" at Wells Fargo who recently gave a seminar. He related how new legislation/regulation (during the prior administration) was lifting the requirement that financial advisors such as himself would no longer be required to serve in a fiduciary capacity to investors, i.e. bank customers who had been diverted to financial advisors such as himself. This mingling of banking services with investment advisory services, to me, is inappropriate. While monies on deposit with a federally insured bank (FDIC) are protected to hundreds of thousands of dollars, there is no such protection for those who work under a separate subsidiary of the bank holding company that is the employer of these so-called "financial advisors". When I heard the Wells Fargo financial advisor revel in the fact that he no longer had to serve as a fiduciary to investors, I blanched. There is only one reason a sound financial advisor would not like to serve as a fiduciary. Instead of being required to act in the investors best interest, the "financial advisor" could act in his own best interest, not his customers. I would never use a service associated with a bank holding company that employed "financial advisors". Best to go to a group like Vanguard or Fidelity.
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