Feature
UNDERSTANDING
STEWARDSHIP
By Gabriel Potter, AIF®
Investments are the easy part
When a person agrees to be a fiduciary, it is often based on
a self-assessment of two criteria: first, I am trustworthy, and
second, I understand investments. These facets are certainly
important. If you sit on an investment committee for a
charitable organization or corporate retirement plan, you
should be trustworthy. Furthermore, a lot of the decisions
you’ll be making involve hiring investment managers and
allocating assets, so it would be helpful to know something
about investments.
Understanding investments is a good first step to becoming
a fiduciary. However, investments are the easy part. It is
the other parts – the legal and ethical aspects to being a
fiduciary – which are more difficult to manage. Why?
For starters, there is a relative lack of unde