In its quest to serve the richest clients, Wall Street is abandoning Main Street investors, a top securities regulator said this morning.
"There's an evolution in the large firm space, away from assisting Main Street investors," said Karen Tyler, securities commissioner for North Dakota and president of the North American Securities Administrators Association of Washington.
"Main Street has become an abstract concept" for the large Wall Street investment houses, Ms. Tyler said.
Big firms are targeting high-net-worth clients, often at the expense of the less wealthy, said Ms. Tyler spoke in Chicago at the Independent Firms Conference sponsored by the Washington- and New York-based Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association.
"It's unfortunate, because it comes at a time when more and more investors are responsible for their financial security and need the help of the industry," she said.
The issue of working with middle-class investors is an important one for independent broker-dealers because executives and reps with independent firms commonly claim in discussions with regulators and lawmakers that they serve a variety of clients, not just the most wealthy.
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