Personally I'd say going the Smartcoin way is the best option here. It's better if we dont' have to trust a 3rd party, especially over years .. otherwise it's no better than a brokerage account (well, less fees, but that's it) .. if the broker goes bust, that's it.
In fact, it's worse in this case, because the broker (UIA creator) would be small fish.
We need to take advantage of the Smartcoins.. getting rid of centralization and having to trust a third party was/is one of the big things which Bitshares could/can use to distinguish itself... IMO.