A universal fiduciary standard could be great for consumers, but financial planners may get less benefit than they think. If all financial advisors were required to adopt a fiduciary standard of care when working with clients, the service models of brokers and registered investment advisors (RIAs) would begin to look alike-and everyone would offer some form of financial planning. Eventually, RIAs might lose their differentiation in the marketplace, according to findings from an Aite Group report released in February.

Aite's study, Fiduciary Responsibilities for Retail Brokers: Advisor Expectations, is based on a survey of 402 financial advisors conducted online in the fourth quarter of 2009. Aite polled professionals from every segment of the business-RIAs, hybrids, independent broker-dealers, wirehouses, regional firms and insurance- and bank-affiliated broker-dealers, says Alois Pirker, research director at Aite Group in Boston. Most advisors-including 71% of wirehouse brokers and 48% of RIAs-believe that under the fiduciary standard, services offered by the various channels would converge.

The SEC has allowed brokers to offer financial planning advice without an investment advisory relationship if the service is incidental to the traditional services they provide. In addition, several wirehouses now offer comprehensive planning services, and some, such as UBS, already require brokers who offer those services to act as fiduciaries.

Nevertheless, it won't be easy for wirehouses to adjust to the fiduciary world, owing to their sales oriented cultures, Pirker observes. RIAs and financial planners are much more at home with fiduciary practices. "[Planners and RIAs] believe it's very hard [for anyone else] to live and breathe the fiduciary standard," Pirker explains. "What RIAs and brokers are doing has become similar, so why are they governed by different rules and regulations?"

Over the long run, though, the report predicts that as brokers become familiar with how holistic financial planning works, they are likely to become more comfortable with the idea of going independent.