Illustration in blue and green. Text reads: “What fiduciary means today. The ground is moving. What does a fiduciary owe you now?” Below, the ground splits into three tilting slabs. A house sits on one, a parent and child on another, and a graduate in a cap on the third. Footer: “What a Fiduciary Owes Now,” Bob Eng, j.o.y. wealth partners logo.

What a Fiduciary Owes Now

Bob Eng |

A prospective client asked me recently, "Are you a fiduciary?"

 

I welcome that question. It tells me that the person I'm meeting has done their homework. I answered, as I always do, that I am.

 

She had been referred by someone deeply committed to contemplative approaches to social change. So I was curious: what did she understand a fiduciary to be? Someone who puts her interests first, she said.

 

She was right. That's the duty of loyalty. The law pairs it with a second duty: care. Loyalty asks whose side I'm on. Care asks whether I'm doing my best for her.

 

Then another question occurred to me. It came, I think, from the meditation groups I lead on climate, AI, and parenting. They weren't on my mind, but they weren't far away. What does putting her first mean in this period of furious change?

 

I paused. But I didn't ask this second question.

 

She had other thoughts, and more of her life to share. They deserved my full attention, so I kept listening. That, too, was loyalty and care.

 

Still, the question of what fiduciary loyalty and care mean in these times didn't leave.

 

A financial plan rests on assumptions about the future. What a home will cost to insure. How long the money must last. How our children will fare, and what the world they inherit will ask of them.

 

Those assumptions are shifting fast, and the shift shows up in people's lives. The usual reading of care was built for slower change: a suitable portfolio, fair fees, a plan reviewed each year.

 

  • A family in a fire-prone region opens a letter from its insurer. In the zip codes most exposed to climate risk, nonrenewal rates ran about 80% higher than in the least exposed.

     

  • A parent gets through another day just short of snapping. Nearly half of parents say most days their stress is completely overwhelming, compared with about a quarter of other adults.

     

  • A young graduate waits for a job offer that's slower to come. Employment of 22- to 25-year-olds in AI-exposed jobs runs 19% below where it would be had it kept pace with their less-exposed peers.
     

These aren't separate problems. They meet in the same families.
 

Listening can become an excuse. If I wait for the perfect moment, I may have chosen my comfort over her care. Silence that never ends isn't loyalty. It's closer to avoidance.

 

So the question of what loyalty and care mean now has to be asked. At the client's pace, about the client's life.

 

Next time someone asks me whether I'm a fiduciary, I'll say yes. Then I'll ask my question.

 

And I'll ask it of you. What should a fiduciary owe you in a world like this one?

 

If you'd like to explore that question together, I'd welcome the conversation: calendly.com/joywealth.