Retirement Seminar Alert: No Such Thing as a Free Lunch (or Dinner or Brunch)

Two consumer reps — Brenda Cude, a financial planning professor at the University of Georgia, and Karroll Kitt, an associate professor emeritus at the University of Texas at Austin — proposed getting lunch bias out of the model notice.

The consumer reps submitted a notice rewrite of their own in April. They said they "used the term 'free meals,' to be inclusive for a brunch, lunch or dinner."

When marketers first began organizing the seminars, the most popular meals "used to be lunches, then went to dinners, and could move to brunch," Cude and Kitt wrote.

Insurance agent and financial advisor groups seem accept the idea of letting the revised notice apply to all sorts of free meals.

The advisor groups have persuaded the working group to change the explanation of why consumers should be cautious when attending free meal seminars. The 2008 version, which is the one now in use, warns consumers that, "There is always a catch to a 'free' seminar, even those advertised as unbiased."

In a draft posted earlier this month, the notice states that, "There is always a purpose to a 'free' seminar, even those advertised as unbiased."

Cude and Karroll argued that use of the word "catch" would do more to get consumers to be careful.

Gary Sanders, a vice president at the National Association of Financial Advisors, argued told the working group that earlier drafts of the model notice were too mean to agents.

The earlier versions "could create the unwarranted and incorrect impression that all or most of financial advisors/insurance producers are unethical and/or do not 'play by the rules,'" Sanders wrote.

— Read 5 More Tips for Seminar Success for Advisors on ThinkAdvisor.