FIDUCIARY DUTY FOR ADVISORS NOT CREATED BY “BEST INTEREST” STANDARD ALONE
Dealers’ and Compliance Officers’ conducting supervisory reviews of representatives’ activities to ensure that standards are met will find this article of interest and instructive to their compliance programs. In short, the author assesses a recent Ontario Divisional Court decision and states that an advisor’s regulatory or professional standards obligation to act in the best interests of the client (and to avoid conflicts of interest) does not raise the relationship to that of a fiduciary unless there is also trust, confidence, dependency, and vulnerability.