As a Certified Financial Planner and member of the Financial Planning Association of Canada, I choose to serve in a fiduciary capacity at all times through a fiduciary pledge. This means I have a legal and ethical responsibility to act in the best interests of my clients and uphold the confidence, good faith, reliance, and trust vested in me.
A fiduciary duty is the highest standard of care that financial advisors and their firms can adhere to when dealing with their clients. It means that they are legally required to put your interests ahead of their own at all times and in all dealings.
Believe it or not, most financial advisors are not required to treat clients with the utmost honesty and integrity that comes with being a fiduciary. That’s why I felt it was important to make it very clear that at Align Wealth, we choose to practice as a fiduciary financial planner. This means that I take the responsibility of putting my clients’ best interests ahead of my own. Always.
There’s no hard sell, and no hidden agenda nor hidden costs. Just good advice delivered from the heart with honesty and integrity. Therefore, I commit to the following fiduciary pledge:
From the moment a planner joins FPAC they are pledging to take and adhere to the FPAC Fiduciary Pledge.
"I pledge to act as a fiduciary in all my dealings with my clients. By making this pledge, I am promising:
1. To put the needs of clients first, ahead of my needs or the needs of any other party.
2. To work to help my clients achieve their goals and dreams by acting with the skill, care, prudence, diligence, loyalty and good judgement of a fiduciary, rooting my professional practice in evidence-based advice.
3. To avoid and minimize conflicts of interest, and to manage and disclose those conflicts which cannot be avoided.
4. To fully and transparently disclose all sources of my compensation in all of my dealings with clients.
5. To uphold the code(s) of conduct of the issuing body of my financial planning designation, and to continuously work to improve my skills and practice, and the financial planning industry as a whole.
6. To encourage other financial planners to uphold the standards and values embodied by this Association, and to aid this and subsequent generations of financial planners to fulfill on the Association’s vision for the financial planning industry.
7. And to help to build awareness of the good that financial planners can do for their clients.”
