The Securities and Exchange Commission Chairwoman Mary Jo
White said her agency will look at the different standards on sale of
investment products this year, but did not hint if the SEC will change
anything. She made her comments at the year’s first meeting of the agency’s
Investor Advisory Committee. The financial and insurance industries have been
waiting several years for a final word on applying the brokers’ fiduciary
standard of care to insurance agents and advisors when they sell financial
products.
White’s comments came as the Department of Labor (DOL) also
deals with the issue of whether to impose a fiduciary standard of care on
agents and advisors selling investment products into retirement funds. Insurance
agents and advisors have been hoping that the DOL would hold off on its plans
until the SEC decides what to do. That is because the SEC has recently been
leaning toward keeping the current dual standard out of concern that doing
otherwise would severely limit the ability of lower-income employees to seek
investment advice. That has been the key point made by representatives of
agents and advisors to keeping the current suitability standard.
Concern has also been raised that the new DOL proposal could
eliminate paying commissions to agents for products sold into retirement
accounts covered under ERISA, which the DOL has jurisdiction over.
Congress debated legislation in 2013 that would require the
two groups to corroborate on establishing new standards, but that failed. An
effort to put such a provision in must-pass legislation reauthorizing the
Terrorism Risk Insurance Act fell through in last days of the lame-duck
Congress last December.
The DOL appears to be on the verge of sending to the Office
of Management and Budget a revised version of a proposal it first introduced in
2010 to enhance the standard of care used in selling investment products in
401(k)s and similar products, but withdrew the proposal in mid-2011 after the
proposal ran into intense heat in Congress and within the agent/advisor
industry.
The National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors
said it hopes the SEC's proposed rule would address real problems existing in
the marketplace and not bring unintended consequences for the investors it
would aim to protect.
Target date funds automatically rebalance their mix of
stocks, bonds and other investments to become more conservative as time passes.
Investment in these skyrocketed after they were approved as default investments
for retirement plans by the by the 2006 Pension Protection Act.
SEC commissioner Luis A. Aguilar said at the American
Retirement Initiative’s 2015 Winter Summit last week that target date funds
have become an attractive option for employees who do not want to actively
manage their retirement savings themselves. He said there have been reports
that approximately 72 percent of 401(k) plans offer target date funds. By the
end of 2012, target date funds accounted for 15 percent of all 401(k) assets,
Aguilar said, “and that figure is expected to grow in the coming years.”
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