Author Archives: jwatkins

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About jwatkins

I am a securities and ERISA attorney. I hold CFP Board Emeritus™ status and I am an Accredited Wealth Management Advisor™. I provide fiduciary risk management consulting to 401k/430b plans, trustees, RIAs and other investment fiduciaries. I am a 1977 graduate of Georgia State University and a 1981 graduate of the University of Notre Dame Law School. I am the author of "CommonSense InvestSense: The Power of the Informed Investor" and "The 401(k)/403(b) Investment Manual: What Plan Sponsors and Plan Participants REALLY Need To Know" I write two blogs, "CommonSense InvestSense, investsense.com, and "The Prudent Investment Fiduciary Rules, fiduciaryinvestsense.com. As a former compliance director, I have extensive experience in evaluating the legal prudence of various types of investments, including mutual funds and annuities. My goal is to combine my legal and compliance experience in order to help educate investors and investment fiduciaries on sound, proven investment strategies that will help them protect their financial security and/or avoid unnecessary fiduciary liability exposure.

“The Prudent Investment Adviser Rule™: Risk and Liability Management for Investment Fiduciaries”

With the pending release of the Department of Labor’s new fiduciary standard, I am happy to announce that my new book and ebook, “The Prudent Investment Adviser Rule™: Risk and Liability Management for Investment Fiduciaries,: are now available at amazon.com. … Continue reading

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Outsourcing: Panacea or Placebo?

Outsourcing has become a buzzword in the investment advisory industry. I have had many RIA firms tell me that they have outsourced bot their compliance and wealth management functions, allowing them to concentrate solely on marketing and  gathering assets. In … Continue reading

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2016 So Far and the Levy Decision

I recently posted an article on my blogs about the fact that not everyone is losing money in 2016. I had several people respond negatively, some rudely so, suggesting that I did not understand the cyclical nature of the stock … Continue reading

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401K Mutual Funds Fail Fiduciary Prudence Test

Our recent analysis of the top ten mutual funds in 401(k) plans revealed that 7 of the 10 funds failed to pass our simple fiduciary prudence test. The funds were evaluated based on their five-year performance between 2011-2015. The findings … Continue reading

Posted in 401k, 401k compliance, 401k investments, 404c, 404c compliance, compliance, evidence based investing, fiduciary compliance, fiduciary law, investments, pension plans, wealth management, wealth preservation | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Some Common RIA Mistakes That Regulators Are Focusing On in 2016

Going to start the new year with a rather brief, but important, post. The regulators have announced their intent to perform more RIA audits in 2016. Some recent cases have highlighted issues that do not regularly receive the amount of … Continue reading

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Combining the Active Management Value Ratio 2.0™ and the Active Expense Ratio – A More Meaningful Evaluation of Fiduciary Prudence

“The two variables that do the best job in predicting [a mutual fund’s] performance are expense ratios and turnover.”- Burton Malkiel, “A Random Walk Down Wall Street” Registered investment advisers and their representatives are fiduciaries. The courts have consistently held … Continue reading

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ERISA, Fiduciary Duty and the Art of Skinnydipping

Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked. – Warren Buffett As followers of this blog know, I normally post once a month. However, I am making an exception due to the importance of the … Continue reading

Posted in 401k, 401k compliance, 401k investments, 404c, 404c compliance, compliance, evidence based investing, fiduciary compliance, fiduciary law, investments, pension plans, retirement plans, RIA, wealth management, wealth preservation | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Cross-Examining Financial Planning’s Active vs. Passive Study

Financial Planning magazine recently ran an article on their online site purportedly to demonstrate that actively managed mutual funds provide better performance than passively managed mutual funds, such as the popular index funds. Whenever I see such claims, the securities … Continue reading

Posted in 401k, 401k compliance, 401k investments, 404c, 404c compliance, evidence based investing, fiduciary compliance, fiduciary law, investments, pension plans, retirement plans, wealth management, wealth preservation | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Protecting Your Practice with the Active Management Value Ratio 2.0™

RIAs often have mock audits performed. These audits generally focus on the various regulatory requirements for RIA, including the various documents and internal procedures of an RIA. More often than not, these mock audits do not include a forensic fiduciary … Continue reading

Posted in 401k, 401k compliance, 401k investments, 404c, 404c compliance, compliance, evidence based investing, fiduciary compliance, fiduciary law, investments, pension plans, retirement plans, RIA, RIA Compliance, securities, securities compliance, wealth management, wealth preservation | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Avoiding ERISA’s #1 Fiduciary Liability “Gotcha”

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. – Aldous Huxley Fiduciary law is a combination of trust and agency law. The basic rule of fiduciary law is that a fiduciary must always put their customer’s/client’s best interests … Continue reading

Posted in 401k, 401k compliance, 401k investments, 404c, 404c compliance, fiduciary compliance, fiduciary law, investments, pension plans, retirement plans, wealth management, wealth preservation | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment