Mutual fund Point of Sale initiative

Advisor.ca reported on my talk at the Strategy Institute Mutual Fund Point-of-Sale (POS) Summit.  The panel in which I participated focused on Product Arbitrage – the situation that results when similar products are not treated the same by prevailing rules and regulations.  Where regulations result in a lower barrier to selling for some products (compared to others), arbitrage will result.  Indeed, I’ve heard of many advisors dropping their mutual fund sales licenses to focus on less regulated segregated funds.  While the POS initiative applies to both mutual and seg funds, arbitrage still exists between these two products (not to mention many others).

As for the panel discussion, I tried to stay on topic.  But nearly three years ago, I laid out two key reasons why I thought the Joint Forum‘s POS initiative, as proposed, will fail.