Maria Elena Lagomasino, chief executive of GenSpring Family Offices, an outspoken  advocate of the fiduciary standard, fired another salvo today, releasing a new white paper, Not All Advisors Are the Same - How Can You Tell the Difference?

“No matter what the words are, if the business (economic) model is built around selling proprietary products or being paid to distribute someone else’s products, then the clients’ best interest is secondary to the economics,” Lagomasino wrote. “So my experience is that the only way to be a fiduciary is to be paid that way - paid to put the interests of the families first.”

She also outlined the history of the regulations separating banks, brokers and investment advisors.

After the Glass-Steagall Act of 1932 was repealed in 1999, the paper  states, “brokerage rules and a brokerage mindset — otherwise known as a ‘sales culture’ — swept through the banks, eventually overtaking the prevailing and predominant fiduciary culture which had existed in the banks’ private-banking groups.”

“Though many private bankers intend to put clients’ interests first, it has been my personal experience that the new sales-oriented business model trumps words and good intentions,” Lagomasino wrote.

The paper will be distributed to GenSpring clients next week.

GenSpring, which is majority owned by SunTrust Banks, is the country’s largest registered investment advisor, with about $11 billion in discretionary assets.

Lagomasino and other family office industry executives also recently signed A Call to Apply the Fiduciary Standard, from The Committee for the Fiduciary Standard.