Investor advisers are concerned over how markets should be regulated

According to a newly released TD Ameritrade Institutional survey, which was conducted between May 14 and May 22, about one in three RIAs considered looming regulatory changes as their top business concern. In a similar survey conducted six months earlier for the Jersey City investment registered investment advisers cited business growth as the major worry keeping them up at night.

Registered investment advisers, who as a rule yield most of their revenue through fees based on assets under management and combine investment recommendations with broader financial planning, are generally regulated by the SEC if they have $25 million or more of assets under management and by states if they are under that threshold.

According to the survey, conducted among 503 RIAs nationwide by St. Louis-based Maritz Inc., 33% of respondents said they would like regulating authority to stay with the SEC, while 22% preferred state regulators. 19 percent preferred to be under the protection of an existing self-regulatory organization such as the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Inc. of New York and Washington, which oversees brokers.

A coalition of financial planning trade groups attempts to influence FINRA as a regulator, hoping instead to have the smaller Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards Inc. of Washington oversee the more than 300,000 planners who are currently unregulated.

Besides, in the TD Ameritrade survey the “macroeconomic environment” ranked second with 31% of RIAs, business profitability was third with 27% of respondents, followed by management of risk, legal and compliance issues (18%) and by concerns about marketing their businesses (17%).