Last month marked the 10-year anniversary of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), the law which overturned Glass-Steagal and tore down the silos between securities, banking and insurance. It also gave birth to our industry. On its 10th birthday, some critics, most notably former Fed chairman Paul Volcker, are blaming GLBA for the banking crisis and calling for it to be undone. It was responsible for creating banks that are "too big to fail," for the housing bubble and the subprime mortgage crisis.

But as former representative Thomas Bliley says, undoing GLBA is like trying to put an egg back together after the shell is broken. The act promoted competition to lower the price of banking services, and increased the growth and availability of financial products to many more people. Although GLBA anointed the Fed the umbrella supervisor of this stew of overlapping services, for political reasons (i.e., read territorial), silos remained between the various regulatory agencies, creating many cracks through which mounting problems could eventually fall.

Ironically, the GLBA also helped solve some of those problems at the height of the crisis by allowing investment banks to become bank holding companies and brokerages to merge with banks. But it's hardly the fault of the GLBA that banks sold mortgages to people who couldn't afford them or that the subsequent securitization of those mortgages went completely unregulated. It seems that two things are certain: If banks didn't make loans to people who couldn't afford them—really a no-brainer that should be strictly enforced—and if fancy new derivatives were monitored, if not regulated, on an open market like regular securities, the crisis wouldn't have happened. Of course no one likes more regulation, but nothing brings home the need for it like a market meltdown of Depression-era proportions.

I would argue that GLBA, which has allowed financial services to evolve into an increasingly client-centric business has done far more good than harm and you are the drivers of this movement. So this is a birthday to be celebrated!

Speaking of celebrations, congratulations to our the BIC Top 50 Bank Reps! You pulled through the worst of times and mightily deserve to have the wind at your back. Meanwhile in "The F Word," on page 31, we explore what could be a new fiduciary standard you may have to meet. I also want to call your attention to "A Simpler Mousetrap," on page 34. It's about a new stripped-down annuity that most platform reps can easily sell it.

We wish all of you a wonderful holiday and a productive new year!