Why FIAT Matters Outside Finance

FIAT stands for Fiduciary In All Things.

The concept comes from George Kinder's work on life planning — the idea that a financial planner's role isn't to manage money but to serve the client's deepest sense of what their life should be. Kinder took the legal concept of fiduciary duty and extended it into something closer to a moral obligation. Not just "act in the client's best interest" in a technical, regulatory sense. But actually orient your entire practice around the life the client wants to live.

When I first encountered this framework at Golden Gate University, it felt so obviously right that I couldn't believe it wasn't the default. Start with the life. Not the money. Serve the person, not the portfolio. Hold yourself to the highest standard — not because a regulator requires it, but because that's what the relationship demands.

I took that idea and I haven't been able to stop expanding it.

Because here's what I've come to believe: fiduciary duty shouldn't be limited to financial advice. It should be the standard in every service relationship where one person has expertise and the other has trust.

That's FIAT. Fiduciary In All Things.

What fiduciary actually means

Before I apply this outside finance, let me be precise about what fiduciary means inside it.

A fiduciary is legally required to act in the client's best interest. Not "suitable" interest. Not "acceptable" interest. Best interest. If a cheaper option exists, recommend it. If a recommendation benefits you more than the client, don't make it. If there's a conflict of interest, disclose it — and in many cases, eliminate it.

This is a high bar. Most financial professionals don't operate under it. They operate under a suitability standard — which says the recommendation just needs to be "suitable" for the client. Not best. Not optimal. Adequate.

The gap between fiduciary and suitability is where most of the damage happens. Not through fraud. Not through malice. Through a structure that allows the service provider to prioritize their own interest while technically meeting their legal obligation.

That gap isn't unique to finance.

Healthcare: when the prescription serves the prescriber

Your doctor writes you a prescription. You trust them. You fill it. You take the medication.

But here's what you might not know: pharmaceutical companies spend billions on relationships with prescribers. Dinners. Conferences. Speaking fees. Research funding. The Sunshine Act made some of this public — you can look up how much your doctor received from pharmaceutical companies. Most people never do.

I'm not saying your doctor is corrupt. Most doctors are trying to help. But the structure creates a conflict. When the person recommending a treatment has a financial relationship with the company that makes the treatment, the incentives aren't clean. The patient — the person with the trust — is the last to know.

A fiduciary standard in healthcare would mean: recommend the treatment that's best for the patient. Period. Not the one the pharmaceutical rep brought samples of last week. Not the one that triggers a speaking fee. The best one.

This isn't how healthcare works. It could be.

Law: when the billable hour serves the biller

The billable hour is the suitability standard of the legal profession.

An attorney billing by the hour has a structural incentive to take longer. Not to defraud you. But to be thorough. To research one more case. To draft one more revision. To schedule one more call. Each of those things might be legitimate. Some of them are definitely legitimate. But the structure doesn't distinguish between work that serves the client and work that serves the invoice.

A fiduciary standard in law would mean: bill for the work the client needs. Not the work you can justify. If the case can be resolved with a phone call instead of a motion, make the phone call — even though the motion pays three times as much.

Some attorneys operate this way. The ones who do tend to build practices where clients stay for decades. That's not a coincidence.

Real estate: when the commission serves the agent

You hire a real estate agent to help you buy a house. They show you properties. They tell you what they think. You trust their judgment — that's why you hired them.

But your agent is paid a percentage of the sale price. The higher you pay, the more they earn. Every dollar you negotiate off the price costs your agent money. The structure creates a tension between what serves you and what serves the person advising you.

Most agents handle this honestly. But the system doesn't require it. An agent who steers you toward a more expensive property, or who doesn't fight as hard on price because a higher sale means a higher commission — that agent isn't breaking any rules. They're operating within a structure that rewards exactly that behavior.

A fiduciary standard in real estate would mean: help the buyer find the right property at the right price. Even when the right price is lower. Even when the right property pays a smaller commission. Serve the person who hired you, not the transaction.

Insurance: when the product serves the producer

Insurance is where the gap between fiduciary and suitability might be the widest.

Most insurance is sold, not bought. An agent recommends a policy. You trust them — you don't understand the actuarial tables, the exclusion clauses, the riders. You're relying on the agent to match you with the right coverage.

But the agent is compensated by the insurance company, not by you. Different products pay different commissions. A whole life policy pays significantly more than a term policy. An annuity with a long surrender period pays more than one without.

The agent who recommends the higher-commission product isn't necessarily doing anything wrong. If the product is "suitable," it's legal. The suitability standard is the floor, and most insurance regulation doesn't require more than that.

A fiduciary standard in insurance would mean: recommend the coverage that best serves the client, regardless of what it pays the agent. If term life is the right answer, recommend term life — even though whole life pays five times the commission.

Education: when the institution serves itself

Higher education has its own version of this problem.

Universities charge tuition. Students take on debt. The institution's revenue depends on enrollment. The career services office is an afterthought. The admissions office is a machine.

A fiduciary standard in education would mean: only admit students into programs where the likely outcomes justify the cost. If an eighteen-year-old wants to borrow $200,000 for a degree with a median starting salary of $35,000, a fiduciary institution would say: let me show you the math before you sign.

That's not what happens. What happens is the admissions office sends an acceptance letter and the financial aid office helps the student figure out how to borrow enough to pay for it. The institution gets paid regardless of the outcome. The student bears the risk.

Software and tech services: when the platform serves the vendor

This one's more recent, but the pattern is the same.

Software companies optimize for engagement, not outcomes. Social platforms are designed to keep you scrolling, not to make your life better. SaaS products are priced to maximize retention through switching costs, not to deliver proportional value.

A fiduciary standard in tech would mean: build the product that serves the user's actual interest. If the user would be better off using a competitor's product, tell them. If the feature you're building increases engagement but decreases well-being, don't build it.

No tech company operates this way. The incentive structure makes it nearly impossible. But imagine if they did.

The common thread

Every one of these examples follows the same pattern:

One party has expertise. The other has trust.
The expert is compensated in a way that doesn't perfectly align with the trusting party's interest.
The gap between those interests is where damage occurs.
The trusting party — the patient, the client, the student, the buyer — is the last to understand the gap exists.

This is the principal-agent problem. Economists have written about it for decades. It's well understood in theory and almost completely unaddressed in practice.

Because addressing it means restructuring how service providers get paid. It means eliminating revenue models that profit from the gap. It means holding people to a standard that costs them money when they violate it.

The financial planning industry resists fiduciary duty for the same reason every other industry would: it's expensive to serve someone's best interest when you could legally get away with serving their adequate interest and earning more.

What would actually change

If fiduciary duty became the default in service relationships — not as a legal mandate, but as a professional standard — here's what would shift:

Compensation would align with outcomes. Flat fees instead of commissions. Retainers instead of billable hours. Payment for advice, not for product placement. When the service provider makes the same amount regardless of what they recommend, the recommendation gets honest.

Disclosure would become unnecessary — because there'd be nothing to disclose. No conflicts to manage. No hats to switch between. The relationship would be simple: I'm on your side. That's it.

Trust would become structural, not personal. You wouldn't need to trust your advisor, your doctor, your attorney as a person. You'd trust the structure — because the structure wouldn't allow them to benefit at your expense. Good people in bad structures still produce bad outcomes. Fix the structure and the people's character matters less.

Quality would differentiate. Without the ability to profit from the gap, service providers would compete on the only thing left: how well they actually serve their clients. The industry would reward competence instead of sales ability.

Why this isn't idealistic

I can hear the objection: this is nice in theory, but it would never work at scale. The economics don't support it. You can't eliminate every conflict of interest.

Fair. I'm not pretending you can redesign every industry overnight. But I am pushing back on the assumption that misaligned incentives are inevitable.

I run two advisory firms on a flat-fee, fiduciary-only model. No AUM. No commissions. No dual registration. The economics work. The clients get better advice. And I sleep fine.

The people who say fiduciary duty doesn't scale are usually the ones whose business model depends on it not scaling. When your revenue comes from the gap between "best interest" and "suitable," of course you argue the gap is necessary.

It's not. I'm proof. And I'm not the only one — there's a growing movement of fee-only fiduciary advisors who've figured out the same thing. The model works. The resistance isn't economic. It's structural. The incumbents don't want to change because the current structure pays them well.

What I can actually do

I can't fix healthcare. I can't fix law. I can't fix real estate, insurance, education, or tech.

I don't have the leverage, the platform, or the expertise to restructure incentives in industries I don't work in. And I'm not going to pretend that writing an essay about it is the same as doing it.

But I can do it in mine.

Wealth In Yourself is built on fiduciary duty. Every conversation. Every recommendation. One hat.

Top Shelf Private Wealth is built the same way. Professional hockey players deserve the same standard. Their agents protect their contracts. I protect their money.

Lake Tahoe Motorcycle Rentals and CA Homes In The Pines aren't advisory firms, but they run on the same principle: serve the person who showed up. Don't extract value from them. Create it for them. Treat every customer interaction like you have a fiduciary obligation — because in my view, you do.

That's FIAT.

Not a slogan. Not a marketing angle. A standard I hold myself to, across everything I build. Is it harder? Yes. Does it pay less in some cases? Probably. Is it the right way to build? I've never been more sure of anything.

The bet

FIAT is a bet. It's a bet that if you structure your business around the client's best interest — truly, structurally, not just rhetorically — the business will be stronger for it. That clients will stay longer. That referrals will come more naturally. That the work will mean more. That at the end of your career, you'll be able to look back and know you did it right.

I'm making that bet with every firm I build. Every client I serve. Every decision I make.

Not everyone will agree with this. The financial services industry certainly doesn't. But I'm not building for the industry. I'm building for the people the industry was supposed to serve.

I can't fix every industry. But I can live FIAT in mine. That's Wealth In Yourself. That's Top Shelf Private Wealth. That's the standard I'm holding.

This is personal reflection, not financial advice. For personalized guidance, see wealthinyourself.com or topshelfprivatewealth.com.