Here's why. I'm a former wholesaler. The planning business is currently focused on growing advisory based practices, no commission and an asset based fee charged for management. The majority of business is still wannabe Gecko's as previously described, commission based brokers posing as planners. A commission guy is incentivized to churn clients and maximize earning without losing client, an investment advisor is incentivized to grow your assets as it increases his expenses. And by the way they know less about finance than you will ever imagine. They actually don't care or believe in anything besides hairgel, their existence, and the raging superego behind their unjustified salaries. Wholesalers are generally no better.
Finance has attracted these, lets be honest here, whores because of the high salaries. Problem here is there is no passion, so to succeed they mislead and defraud. Even Investment Advisors have fee structures that would make Bogle cringe. Think of the trilions charged in fees over the past ten years, it truly is the wall street machine. Now, we as a society of shareholders are enfranchising owners but not accountability. However, that is another story and why guys like Icahn earn their daily dole.
Also, everyone and their brother chases after high net worth clients. No one cares about mass market, they miss the boat. We built a product that could be packaged in turnkey solutions for mass market where the client goes to a website, fills out questionairre and receives turnkey retirement solution. If more advice required, telephone in for an hourly fee.
Sometimes these brokers crack me up, the truth is they think they are so much better than Joe sixpack that why bother with him. And they lead lemings off a cliff over and over again.
A former high school classmate, who was a GED graduate because he dropped out due to behavior and drug problems, is now a wirehouse broker. They need to increase the difficulty of the S7, I finished the test in about an hour a few years back. FINRA, set the bar please.