The vast majority of those in the financial services industry are trying to do the right thing for their clients. But how can you spot those who are using illegal, predatory sales practices or giving bad advice on purpose?
In episode 3, we’ll talk to investment compliance expert Bob Lavigne. As the Director of Broker-Dealer and Investment Advisory at Kaufman Rossin, Bob helps the financial services industry navigate increasingly complex issues so firms can better serve the public.
The vast majority of those in the financial services industry are trying to do the right thing for their clients. But how can you spot those who are using illegal, predatory sales practices or giving bad advice on purpose?
In episode 3, we’ll talk to investment compliance expert Bob Lavigne. As the Director of Broker-Dealer and Investment Advisory at Kaufman Rossin, Bob helps the financial services industry navigate increasingly complex issues so firms can better serve the public.
Welcome to Let's talk fame crime. The show where we explain not only what compliance and financial crime are, but most importantly what it means for you and how it affects your daily life. I'm your host, Dave Ackerman. I'm a lawyer, former Chief Compliance Officer, and financial regulation expert for nice Active Minds based in New York City. We strive to bring you conversations with some of the most interesting people we can find. All designed to help you understand what's happening in the financial world. Our topic this week is near and dear to my heart, and we're focusing on investor education to help you protect yourselves. So it's everybody's favorite time it's tax season, a joke but many people look forward to tax season because they expect to get some money back from the government. This year is particularly unique because of COVID stimulus payments, or perhaps your lifestyle changes due to quarantine, working from home etc. But our show today is not about taxes. I'm sorry, if I disappoint you. It's about what a company's tax season. So for those of us in the industry who deal with fraud and financial crime and compliance, anecdotally, we see an uptick in predatory practices around tax season. The reason behind this could be many. First off, you're in their office already, or you're talking to your investment professional or financial planner planner. So they have a captive audience. And then secondly, have you ever returned coming back to you, that opens up a door to a conversation, you know, what should you do with the money? So, before we continue, I want to preface our conversation. I know we talk a lot about the underbelly of financial services. But I don't want to scare you. There's literally 1000s of financial professionals out there. And the vast majority of them are decent, hard working people who care about their clients and try to provide bonafide services. All of them are governed by strict rules that dictate what their sales practices should look like, and what investments are suitable for you at home in your situation. And our next guest is going to help us decipher what investment professionals can and cannot do to help you be aware of it. Bob Levine is the director of broker dealer and investment advisor, Northeast region and Kauffman Lawson's risk advisory services practice. Try saying that three times fast. He spent a career protecting investors and the market as a csio, a regulator, and now he's a consultant to various different investment professionals, to help them understand how to best serve their clients, which is you within the boundaries of the law, and really understanding what the law is making them do. So with that, I'm excited to introduce Bob, thanks so much for joining us. Thanks for having me, Dave, I'm really excited to do this with you. And, and you and I have such similar backgrounds, it's it's the this is going to be an interesting conversation. What should the good advisors be doing? Right? I kind of want to help people understand what should be the expectation when they're sitting down with a financial professional. And, and this person is good and decent and really trying to do the right thing? What should what should a customer expect? Really what they should expect out of the gate is a good back and forth conversation. Like you said, there's 1000s and 1000s of investment advisors and financial professionals out there. And while they're all set, some of them are going to be similar. Not all two are alike. They have different backgrounds and skill sets. And they have different areas of expertise in different investment platforms. So it should be a good back and forth conversation. And it's an opportunity for the investor to ask a lot of questions about what the approach is and how they get paid and things like that. So they can make an informed decision. So that's important, right, an informed decision, a lot of financial regulation that is designed to help the average mom and pop investor is about disclosure. So for those people who are listening, what are the types of disclosures they should be paying attention to what is the information that they're that's being thrown at them that should trigger in their minds, okay, this is something I need to focus on. I need to understand it and I need to ask questions about it. Right, and a lot of that's going to come down to their conflicts. You know, conflicts of interest sometimes has a very negative connotation to it in it and it shouldn't because everybody has conflict. When you do something and you provide a service and you get renumeration for it. You have a conflict here and there. So having that open conversation is is a big step in there. direction for the investing public to make a good decision. And some of those questions can be, how do you get paid? How do you go through a due diligence process to, to around products that you're going to be recommending to me and putting into my portfolio? What kind of powers will you have over my account isn't going to be discretionary and non discretionary? And what does that mean? But it can also be some uncomfortable questions, but but they're important to ask, you know, regarding disciplinary histories, like you said, there's 1000s of investment firms out there. And most of them, if not a super majority of them are good clean firms trying to do the right thing for their clients. But it's a good conversation to have, you're talking about how you supervise the accounting, and what kind of levels of service the investor can expect from the the financial professional. And that's great. So there's, there's a lot in there. And as part of the investing public, I tried to when when I do presentations and trainings for investment professionals and compliance professionals, one thing I often try to bring to the forefront is there's a reason these rules exist, there's a reason we are trying to tell you the format in which you need to do business, because this stuff's hard. You hear, you know, financial information, investment decisions, and immediately people start to almost panic. Because just knowing the terminology and the verbiage that's being used is difficult, let alone what these individual investments actually mean. So, you know, in your experience, you and I are both at FINRA, there's, I often say to people, most individuals are going to ask more questions when buying a cell phone than they will from an investment professional, who they're handing over their retirement, their life savings, their 401k. Like, so what, in addition to questions like disciplinary history and understanding conflicts of interest? What are what are some of the really just the key things that a person needs to know about this, this individual who's going to be handling their money? So for me, it starts at the very top right? And what type of financial professional are you? Are you a broker? Or are you an investment advisor representative? And what does that mean? You know what, at a high level, you have two sets of regulations, one that drives brokers, called the best interest standard, and one that drives investment advisors, which is the fiduciary standard. And really, the bright line and the two is one is an ongoing duty of care. And one is a point in time, duty of care. And that can be pretty confusing. I remember when these the the rules were being released. And I and I spoke to my father in law, and I said, told them Well, yeah, there's a new rule coming out that requires brokers to act in their best interest. And his history was, what the heck have they been doing all along. And again, most of them have been acting in your best interest, but there's conflicts associated, and a lot of it comes down to different products pay differently. So getting to know what it is that you're going to be invested in, and what that means for your advisor. And also, are there any other options out there, that might be a cheaper alternative for you. So most of these conflicts come down to financial conflicts. And a lot of times investors think that the the world is out there, but they might have a financial professional that just focuses in mutual funds or annuities or equities, or is a manager of manager there's, there's a dozen different ways they can invest your money. So getting to know them and how they go about picking your investments is a big issue for a lot of investors. And, and for those of you listening, you have the right to do that you have the right to understand how these people are going about looking at your situation and and where they're putting your money. And don't be afraid to ask really, it's, you're not going to look stupid, there's no fear associated with it. And in addition to that, we're going to get to this a little bit later. There's also no pressure, there's no difference if you sign on the dotted line, right then in their in their office, or if you wait a week, a month, a year. They're they're really you're not losing out on anything. So being informed, asking questions, getting good referrals, this is really important. And you know, I have a family member who they they went to go see an investment professional because they got a good recommendation from a woman at the beauty parlor. Like Okay, great. That's that's fantastic that you're getting a recommendation from someone that's happy with the services, but that's not where your responsibility ends to educate yourself. It's ask those tough questions and and know where to go in You feel like you have a problem. So let's move on a little bit. Oh, please. Sorry, no, I was just gonna say and the informations out there that can drive those conversations with the person you're having. There's a lot of disclosures out there. But it's not like reading the back of a credit card statement, right? This is pretty easy to read stuff that will allow you to look into your broker look into the firm, in drive some of those questions, there's different disclosures that are very available on investor.gov, or fin, this broker check that will allow you to ask some some good questions of your broker that is specific to them. And Bob and I are both both former chief compliance officers, every firm has one and that person is accessible, they should be accessible or have someone on their team that's accessible to clients who have questions, because ultimately, their job is to protect you by making sure the firm follows the appropriate guidelines that are set. So let's take let's take a little bit of a pivot for a second, because we've been talking about what people should expect from the good representatives out there, the ones that are trying to do the right thing. Last week, when we were speaking to Dr. Goldberg, one of the things that he had mentioned was, if you are aware of the scams that are out there, it's a lot easier for your brain to process that you're starting to see them in the future. So we're going to try to do is give you a little bit of context into what some of the less, let's shall we say. But nice individuals in this business are trying to do with your money. One thing that that is unique to the situation we currently find ourselves in is social isolation. And isolated decision making has long been a factor in contributing to being exploited this, this especially happens with older investors. And with with quarantine, we're finding that Coronavirus, has made a lot of people very vulnerable in this situation. So while financial abuse can happen at any time, especially now, and especially if you're isolated, or you have a family member who's isolated. Scammers can get personal details, information and really make the the pitch that they're trying to do to get your information look very legitimate. So here's a couple of red flags. And let's kind of Bob and I are going to go over this a little bit so that you understand what it is you need to watch out for big huge red flag guarantees, right, Bob, I mean, like at FINRA that was this is bread and butter stuff. I mean, whenever you see somebody saying you have a guaranteed rate of return, it should be like the prices right? Every Bell and whistle in your head should be starting to ring. But why? What is such a what's a bad thing about a guarantee? So unfortunately, there's no guarantees in life, especially in the investment world, right? You and I know this, because we've lived this and we've done investigations and examinations and reviews. But the markets go up and the markets go down. And there's very, very few products out there that will actually allow for a guarantee. And there's no products out there that guarantee a specific rate of return that's really in the market that securities base. So it still goes back to the old adage that if it if it's too good to be true, it probably is. But this is a very unique world we're living in right now, you know, especially like you said, with with senior citizens and vulnerable, investing public, people know that there's stimulus payments coming in, and senior citizens largely are going to qualify for them. So there's an easy target there. And, you know, we're seeing more and more of it through psychological studies and sociological studies showing that senior citizens living in isolation right now are just happy to talk to people. And you know, it opens them up to fraud, you know, so, from my standpoint, it's checking in on family members and making sure that nothing like this is happening and having some conversations around finances to make sure they're not making bad decisions with their money. Because, you know, as you and I both know, once the money leaves the system, it's very, very difficult to get it back. Right? If, if at all, I mean, and that's Yeah, that's so here are the things your point the high pressured sales tactic, so it's, it's guaranteed it's at right now. It's, you know, you spoke about it in one of the previous podcasts with the take five initiative, right. If you're feeling a little bit of pressured, step back from it, take a breath like you said, Dave, in our industry, it's nice because there's no reason to act right away, you know, other than potential, you know, market movement here and there. There's nothing about today that will be different tomorrow, your commission rate will be saying your fee will be the same, the opportunities will still be there, nothing's going to go away. So there shouldn't be a high pressure to act right away. Right. And then those rare, like, I'm not really worried about my 75 year old uncle day trading when he refuses to go on Amazon, because it isn't like putting his credit card information online. So but these, these are the types of things that that a lot of people maybe don't necessarily know exist. So the guarantees is a big one. And don't think just because it's not even unsophisticated investors, that's a term that gets thrown around a lot, which I don't particularly like the connotation of, but you're hiring a financial professional for a reason. You don't want to deal with this, this is not your expertise, this is theirs. So but there are certain things like the guarantees, even very, very sophisticated investors years ago with Bernie Madoff, Bernie Madoff was was guaranteeing a consistent rate of return. And people bought into it hook line and sinker in the billions, it was the largest scam, in our industry in history at the time, still hasn't been beaten. So the, the idea that, that you could get bamboozled by these kind of high pressure sales tactics is, it's not a negative or a slight on you or your intelligence. This is what they do in order to separate you from your money. Another big one is missing documentation. I, if someone tries to sell you something, with no document, we love paper in this business, we know a lot of trees. So missing documentation is a very, very big red flag, if you see something about an investment that they're trying to put you or a loved one in, that's a stock of mutual funds, something, there's a ton of information that is going to accompany that. So Bob, maybe you could give, give people kind of an idea of of that that stack of papers that you're handed, when you open an account. Those prospectuses or whatnot, what are they good for? Is it? Is it just something that you need to sign in throw away? Or is this is that information that you can actually use? Which Yes, definitely, is definitely information you can use. Like I said, you're going to get a lot of disclosure documents, you're going to get a TV add part to add part to be form CRS, all of it has really good information in there for you. Well, exactly. It's an alphabet soup of forms, unfortunately. And some things you can't expect that might actually throw up a red flag. And when you open it and account with a brokerage firm, they're going to ask for verification of identity. It's very basic things that we do as an industry now. But there's should, you can't just open an account with no paperwork, right? So it gives you the opportunity to review it, ask questions. And even then just opening the account, shy of giving discretionary authority, there's still decisions to be made and conversations to be had. So you know, be wary of like you said, the person that saying, just give me your social security number, I can open up the account for you and don't worry about it wire me some money. The industry that we live in has controls around that to make sure that people aren't stealing money. So checks might be made payable to a brokerage firm rather than an individual representative to be put into your account for you. So it also gives you an opportunity to again, step back and research the person you know, it's one thing if, if it's somebody that's coming to you from a trusted advice, trusted resource that has coming, highly recommended that you know is is reputable. But if you're getting that cold call, that's where you need to start putting your antennas up and make sure you're doing your due diligence before you sign the dotted line. So about one thing you mentioned earlier in the conversation was this idea about taking ownership and and really making sure that you're informed. here's here's another big big red flag. Once you've worked with an investment professional, your your duty to yourself doesn't end you have to stay on top of it. Do your best to try to give them the if your situation changed if you got married if you had a baby If you retired. These are this is information that is really important for that professional to know in order to change the strategy to fit your current situation. And in the in the realm of no good nicks and daddies account discrepancies are a big big red flag. So it is Just like you would scrutinize your credit card statement to make sure that there isn't something on there that you did not charge. So too, you have to do that with your account statements from your investment professionals. So here's what you need to look for unauthorized trades, stuff that you never spoke about, that may be legitimate, but at the very minimum, you would want to call up and follow up on. And then in an unfortunate cases, sometimes, you're going to find that there is unauthorized trading in your account. And that'll give you the opportunity to correct it. Missing funds or other problems. Such there could be a genuine error, it could just be what we call the industry of fat finger. Yep. And it also could indicate something called churning or other type of fraud. So Bob, like churning is a word that gets thrown around a lot. It's constantly in the media. What does that mean for the average person. So for the average person, what some, in some instances, your financial professional will get paid a commission based off of what they're selling. So turning is in essence, overtrading, in order to generate a commission for them. So it's something you want to be wary of, and, and ask the question, why is this being sold in this being bought? Or the similar and nature? Do they have the same objectives? In order to have the conversation about why that move was made? It doesn't make sense, you know, and to your point, Dave, Is it really you know, you can't go full ostrich once you hire a financial professional, you want to take a look at your statements. And we're all humans in a very human industry, and hopefully, any mistakes or just that mistakes, but even doing things like if you, if you have a an investment advisor relationship where you're paying a fee, which is a percentage of how much money they're managing for you, calculate the fee that they're doing, make sure it's consistent with the agreement that you signed, so that they're not overcharging you, or that if they said that they're not going to charge you for x, y, z security, that they are backing that out, and you're not overpaying for it. Fantastic. So we're gonna take a quick break. But when we come back, we've been focusing a lot on what happens when you're talking to a professional, the the expectation that you should have, but now we're going to switch a little bit and talk about what's called suitability or how people know that the recommendations that a financial professional makes are actually good for you, and what governs that, so we're going to be right back. Billions of dollars each year are laundered through illicit money that flows across international borders to fund criminal activities, black market, trade and terrorist financing. Nice atomized and complex data help financial institutions fight back by providing a trade based money laundering and financial crime solution for the physical and financial supply chain of global trading. The solution addresses sanctions risk fraud and money laundering, and provides document verification coverage for red flags embargo and sanctions checks and helps prevent credit and invoice fraud, visit atomized that nice.com slash TB ml to learn more. So we're Bob levina, Director of broker dealer and investment advisor at Kauffman Rosen. Bob helps financial service institutions understand what their obligations are to you to the investor. And he helps explain ways that these financial institutions can protect your investments better. And what we're talking about today are ways of financial perfect like things that financial professionals can and cannot do with what they call their sales practices, how they engage clients how they continue to help clients. This includes something called suitability and suitability fundamentally means that an investment professional can't just offer you a security or an investment strategy that is completely out of the blue or just throw it up off the top of their head. There's specific guidelines as to what they can and cannot recommend for you. So for example, and a person who is young fresh out of college has many years before they retire, and is just starting out their career is going to be in a very different situation than let's say, a person who has been teaching for the last 40 years is nearing retirement and needs to keep a very close watch on what their income is going to look like for the rest of their lives. So suitability takes you in your situation, and then requires these investment professionals to match their advice to your situation. So, Bob, sometimes these things can get very complex, right investment strategies in and of themselves. The reason we're hiring people to give us financial advice is this stuff's hard. So how do people determine the difference between a complex strategy, which is maybe something that's an investment tick technique for only people in a category that are very, very knowledgeable in this area, and a run of the mill strategy, that would be good for the average person on the street. Right, and it's gonna start with that conversation that we talked about, you're gonna they're gonna ask you certain general questions around your income, your net worth, how, how much experience you have in different types of products. And that's all going to go a long way into determining what kinds of investments that they're going to recommend to you. So as you typically, as you said, get older and closer to retirement, you become a little bit less aggressive with that money, because you want to protect it and preserve it. So you want to make sure that you are your investments that are being recommended to you that are in your in your investment program, are consistent with what it is that you're trying to accomplish. So if you are a younger person, and you might be a little bit more aggressive, and you want to grow your money, if you're in lower risk, fixed income, or municipal bonds, it's probably not the right thing for you. And the flip side of that would be if you're older, and you're trying to generate income to live off of, are you going into riskier investments that could fluctuate and hurt you in the long run. And, and I think that so that's a point we'll take. And that's something I want to make sure that we all understand who are listening. So you know, my mother is an incredibly intelligent woman, she has two master's degrees, she taught in New York City Schools her entire career. And at the same time, she's retired, she's on a fixed income, if you can't necessarily put her in, let's say, a, a Bitcoin future or something that is insanely hard to understand, or is very risky and volatile. So what they do is they kind of separate people into categories of risk, low risk, medium risk, and high risk. And, Bob, there's there's going to be, I would imagine that people who are sitting down and talking to their financial professionals, one thing that we've talked a lot about is making sure you understand where your information is going and how it's being used. So what's the type of information that investment managers need in order to understand where you fit into that risk category? I mean, obviously, they have your name, and they have your bank account, but what else are they going to be looking for in order to make that determination? So they're going to be asking you about what your objective for the account is? Is it for long term growth or retirement? What's your risk profile in terms of, you know, How comfortable are you with risk and, and leaving me things like, what your ages what your liquid net worth is? How much your other assets are worth. And all of these are very basic questions that can sometimes again, be uncomfortable. Again, going back to the family members, I have a family member that has their money in different with different financial professionals. And the conversation you had with them was, well, I didn't tell them how much I actually had, because I don't want them to know, and then try to, you know, get get the rest of my assets. And my answer to them was, well, then you're doing yourself a disservice, because they can't really serve you if they don't know what you have and what you need, because they're going to build something off of what you tell them. So it's kind of garbage in, garbage out. So be honest with them, let them know where that you know, how comfortable you are with different products, how comfortable you are with risk, what your short term needs are. And then also make sure you have that conversation with them. Because as you know, the the months and years go by or you know, in this world that hopefully nobody loses their employment. As those circumstances change, it might change their opinion of what your investment program is going to look like. So that's huge. If those of you listening if you take nothing else from this conversation, please take that. You would never go into a doctor's office and say, This hurts but it's only been hurting for a week. Meanwhile, it's been hurting for six months, because then you're you're giving the doctor inconsistent or inaccurate information in which for them to make their diagnosis. financial professionals are the exact same way. And for those for those who are financial professionals listening to this, I know that that is a constant source of frustration, I've seen it a number of times, on the compliance side, where investment professionals are put into a very precarious situation, they're not getting the full picture. And yet they're required to make a recommendation that's suitable for that individual. Part of this is going to be making people feel comfortable. I love Bob's point earlier about conflicts of interest, they are always going to exist. So long as you're getting paid for a service in this business, there's going to be some conflict somewhere, don't shy away from it, explain it, the more rapport that you can build with your client, the more comfortable that client is going to be, with giving you the information that you need to serve them to the best of your ability, the relationship between you and your advisor is incredibly important and making sure that you give them information that is accurate and consistent. It only helps you. And if you take nothing else from this presentation, I hope you realize that being honest with your financial professional is the best policy, if you go to a doctor, and you tell them, you know, something has only been hurting for a week, meanwhile, it's been hurting for six months, then it's really unrealistic that that doctor is going to be able to give you an accurate diagnosis and an accurate cure. financial professionals are in the exact same situation. So part of that involved, this is where I kind of want to ask your opinion on this. Over the years, what I've tried to do is explain to financial professionals, that the relationship that they build with their clients is based on trust, right, you're they're handing over a lot of money and, and ensuring their financial future to this person. But that trust doesn't necessarily mean that you need to push them for all of their business. And sometimes I have tried to explain to to professionals is, you know, let your work speak for itself. If you show that you care, you show that you're explaining things. And you show that the the conflicts of interest that exist, you are not shying away from it. But you're explaining why it wouldn't necessarily matter in this situation. That combined with doing what you say you're going to do should be enough over time to convince a client to move all of their resources over to you. So, you know, is there is there a way that that you think that either advisors or the clients can can be upfront about that, and at least have that conversation? Maybe uncomfortably so. But then so that that level of trust at least is is established on an ongoing basis? Yeah, it's a it's a great point. And I think it starts off with any, every advisor thinks they're really good at what they do, because they are and they think they have the great, the great program, right? So to your point, letting that speak for itself. You know, I was CTO of a firm and I remember hearing one of one of my advisors there say, give me a small taste of what you have, you know, don't don't move the whole thing over, just give me a little piece. If you like what you see, we'll talk and and that's the kind of person that you want to deal with, right, you don't want the I can't help you unless you move your entire life savings over to me. Otherwise, it's not worth my while, right, because it's probably not the level of service, you're expecting. Most of the advisors out there are going to do what you said, obviously, they would love to have you move your entire portfolio and your entire life savings over them and trust them with it. But they're very willing to earn it. And it's a good conversation to have up front, you know, especially in terms of a lot of these fees, you'll see go down with the amount of money that you invest with them. So negotiating those fees, having that conversation around, here's exactly what I have. So you can build the financial program for me based off of everything that's true and accurate. But I'm only going to give you this little piece. If you do good, we'll have the conversation. Oh, that's an awesome point. I don't even think of that. So the idea that the more money you invest in one place, it's almost like bundling services with the same bank or the same airline, it's you actually get a price break because of the amount of money that you're with them and, or the the amount of transactions that you do with them. So in a lot of cases that's factored that into your decision making process. Let's say you do have enough resources that you're spread out across two or three different advisors. See what that's costing you. Ask them and ask each one of them and see how that factors into your decision making. So lastly, we like to end these conversations with tips and tricks that you can use in order to protect yourself with been discussing a lot of them in terms of questions to ask. But one point that I want to keep coming back to is this idea of isolated decision making. One of the key areas that that fraud protection looks at is, is this population isolated? Are they are they making decisions that are informed or not? So like the point that we made earlier with quarantine protocols, you have large swaths of seniors, and people who who are vulnerable populations are now pretty much cut off from the world. So one of the things that I would like to do is and Bob, want to help people learn where to look for information. Obviously, calling up a family member is great, but not a lot of family members have have either the knowledge of where to go or are sophisticated enough to have someone that's financially savvy in the family. So if if you are isolated, and you are trying to find more information, where are places that people can look on the internet to get it, and glad we're circling back to this, there's a lot of information out there. And it can be on the firm that you're working with, or the person that you're going to be working with. And a lot of it will be available or should be available on the firm's website, typically under disclosures or regulatory or something like that. But there's also you can go to the SE C's website, they have one called investor.gov, or advisor, info.sec.gov. FINRA, which regulates broker dealers, has a broker check that they can, you can go and take a look at each individual or each firm that you're dealing with. And it will show any disclosure information they have any kind of other outside business activities where they're licensed. There's also something called form CRS, which is a relatively new form that's come out in the last year. And what that does is you're gonna see that a lot of them look similar. But there's a lot of good conversation points in there, there's actually things called conversation starters. And what I've always said is, they're really good, and there's going to be more or less some more canned responses around them. It's going to be what conflicts Do you have How do you get paid? How? How am I going to how my investments going to be made? How, what capacity Are you acting in? And what I would say to anybody in the investing public is, as you're asking those questions, and I'd say, turn into it a two year old, right? And just say, how, why, why how, and just keep digging down and have that conversation. More often than not, you're going to find that it'll lead to a wealth of knowledge for you and also get a better relationship with your advisor. Yeah, and again, there's there is no pressure, and the pressure that that is placed on you is almost self inflicted. So you know, they can't do anything unless you sign documents unless you give them access to transfer money over. So if you're not comfortable with digesting that much information at a time, take a moment, take take a minute, take a week, take a month doesn't really matter. Additionally, the the information that Bob was talking about there is there's a lot of information available on websites nowadays. And if you don't understand what it says, Call the company, ask them. And it doesn't matter if let's say, you know, you're only investing a small amount of money 5000 10,000. That's I mean, that's a lot of money. But for the investment world, I'm investing $10,000 is not particularly a lot for a lot of these financial advisors. And they may choose not to explain that information to you, then that's not a company you want to do business with. And I guarantee you, even though you may have a relatively small amount of money, if everybody held companies to that standard, everybody called up and said, Can you explain to me what this means? Over time, they're going to realize that those documents aren't written in plain English, and then they're going to address it. So if if they're we, as a public we as a people hold the industry to a higher level of accountability and, and force the industry to write these these documents in a way that we can understand that. Over time that will have an effect and we've already seen it. Those of us who've been in the industry have already seen it over the years but this, this has been a fantastic conversation. Bob, I want to thank you. Bob is the director of broker dealer and investment advisor Northeast region at Kauffman. Rawson, in the risk advisory services practice, Bob, if you could please tell people how to get in touch with you or maybe there's some financial services organizations out there that want to learn more about your company. Sure, you can learn more about us at Kauffman. rawson.com. That's KUFMNRO SSIN. Or you can reach me at B. Levine at Kauffman Rawson calm. Yes, zero chance. I would have spelled that correctly if you didn't, so we appreciate it. Thanks again, for listening. Please don't forget to subscribe. It does make a huge difference. If you have an idea for a show or if you're interested in being a guest, we'd love to hear from you. So drop us a line at podcast at nice, atomized calm. Don't forget we have bonus content for every episode available at active minds.nice.com forward slash podcast. And I want to thank Bob again for being with us. And we will see you on the next episode of Let's talk thing