A tale to inspire unease inside RIA and wealth advisory circles: MarketCounsel, a high-profile RIA-compliance consulting player, has been hiring lawyers and other employees at “breakneck pace.” Indeed, the demand for “compliance talent” is so great that the New Jersey–based MarketCounsel executive complained to industry website RIAbiz, “It is hard to find people.”

That RIAs, wealth advisers and the financial industry are heavily regulated goes without saying. That compliance complexity and financial rules have become intrusive, or even resemble a “regulatory tsunami,” has become industry catechism to many.

And yet soon comes another federally mandated diktat: the SEC-authorized “customer account statement rule,” more formally known as NASD Rule 2340, or FINRA Rule 2310. For the uninitiated, NASD refers to the National Association of Securities Dealers, and FINRA is the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.

Starting on April 11, 2016, op