While regulators and lawmakers bicker, the Financial Planning Association is sticking to its work expanding awareness of the financial planning function.

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This year's round of Financial Planning Days -- Saturdays in October -- will give non-clients a chance to get free advice in 31 cities.

While this is a great idea, where it really shines is the way it gets participating planners to think outside the box and bring in people who wouldn't otherwise be considered ideal prospects.

Last year saw 2,000 people take advantage of the offer, which sounds great even after you divide it by four Saturdays and about 20 cities.

Roughly 20 consultations per day. That's a full day for just about any firm.

Naturally, a lot of these people will never become what the industry thinks of as a perfect client. They just don't have the assets -- and their planning needs are often pretty pressing.

But you never know. The FPA says a lot of the people who come in are surprisingly affluent.

They just never saw the point in talking to a planner. 

If you're looking for new business, maybe it's time to revisit that "free first consultation" marketing material. And see if anyone lurking in the mass market may actually be a good fit for the way you do business.

With the fiduciary status of 401(k) plan advisors now back in question, the pro-broker Financial Services Institute is hitting Capitol Hill with a vengeance to get its views on the public record.

FSI representatives have scheduled some 200 meetings with various congressmen and congresswomen over the next week.

They aim to clarify their concerns about whether new rules for fiduciaries will squeeze commission-based advisors out of the retirement plan market.

They're also going to be pushing the self-regulatory organization for RIAs, which they think is a fine idea. Most of their RIA members are already regulated by FINRA -- they're dual-registered independent brokers -- so a move from direct SEC oversight would actually streamline their compliance burden.

A4A readers know where FSI stands. The question is, where are the high-profile lobbying groups arguing for stricter fiduciary rules?

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Timing is everything in Washington, and some of the industry's veteran lobbyists say the road to closely watched new regulation is becoming clear.

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Kevin Carroll, who runs the Securities Industry & Financial Markets Association (SIFMA), says a universal fiduciary rule for all investment advisors could happen by the end of the year.

However, he sees too many distractions on Congress for lawmakers to take on the question of who will regulate RIA firms before 2013 or so.

He's optimistic about RIAs moving toward a self-regulatory organization (SRO) like FINRA, but then, most of his group's members are already FINRA-regulated anyway.

One surprise: Matthew O'Toole, who helps run the SEC's advisor exams in the San Francisco office, acknowledges that FINRA could end up monitoring advisors as well.

The Financial Planning Coalition wasn't invited to send a representative to Congress to argue against moving advisors to a self-regulatory structure, but they sent a statement anyway for the record.

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The group -- an umbrella for NAPFA, the FPA, and the CFP Board -- agrees with those who say RIAs need stricter and more frequent examinations. 

But they say moving directly to an SRO is drastic in the absence of cost-benefit analysis, especially given evidence that FINRA isn't exactly perfect either, much less a perfect fit for advisory firms.

It's nice that they're engaged in the issue. However, they still seem more interested in expanding the fiduciary standard than they are in answering the question of who will regulate their members.

The SRO issue doesn't even come up until page 9 of their 14-page statement.

Once again, Barbara Roper of the Consumer Federation of America is the one suggesting alternative solutions. In her testimony, she returned to the alternatives laid out by the SEC itself.

Maybe RIAs could simply pay added fees to the SEC in order to fund a tighter exam regimen.

Or maybe FINRA could simply take over full regulation of all "dual-registered" or hybrid advisors and ease the SEC's burden that way. 

These proposals might not satisfy those who think the SEC has already wrecked its reputation, but as yet there's not much else on the table short of full SRO membership for all advisors.