The Obama administration proposed long-expected
rules toughening oversight of financial professionals paid to give retirement
advice. The move is likely to intensify pushback from Wall Street groups, who
have said the rules’ costs could reduce options for mom-and-pop investors. Under
the proposal, released by the Labor Department on Tuesday, brokers would have
to put clients’ interests ahead of personal gain when they make recommendations
for retirement accounts. At present, brokers’ recommendations only have to be “suitable,”
a weaker standard that critics have said permits products with high fees that
slowly erode returns.
The rules come as individual savers have become responsible
for their own retirement security as traditional pensions have largely
disappeared in favor of individual retirement accounts and 401(k) plans. Such
products either didn’t exist or were brand new when the department wrote its
rules for retirement advice 40 years ago but now contain about $11 trillion in
assets.
Labor Secretary Tom Perez said the rules would
allow brokerage firms to continue to set their own compensation practices,
including commission-based transactions that are a feature of the market. The
firm and the individual adviser would have to sign a contract with clients
promising to act in their best interests and disclose potential conflicts to
charge commissions.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers, in addition to Wall Street
groups like the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, warned
ahead of Tuesday’s announcement that the rules may make it uneconomical for
brokers to serve lower-balance accounts such as those of mom-and-pop investors.
The White House said investors lose as much as $17 billion annually because of
excessive fees and conflicted advice. The industry disputes those figures.
The Labor Department’s proposal would close what critics
view as loopholes in existing law allowing brokers to skirt a fiduciary duty
when they only provide one-time, as opposed to ongoing, advice or by saying in
fine print their recommendations aren’t the primary basis of an investor’s
decision to buy an investment product.
In 2013, about $353 billion was rolled over from workplace
defined-contribution plans to IRAs, according to an estimate by research firm
Cerulli Associates. The Boston firm expects rollovers to continue increasing to
about $546 billion in 2019.
Supporters said the rules are unlikely to restrict access to
high-quality retirement advice. Micah Hauptman, financial-services counsel at
advocacy group the Consumer Federation of America, said online “robo advisers”
already offer high-quality advice to middle-income savers and adhere to a
fiduciary requirement.
Still, the proposal is a blow to some industry groups and
lawmakers who had pushed the Securities and Exchange Commission to move first
in floating a broader fiduciary rule that would apply whenever brokers
recommend stocks or other securities to clients, not just when they give
retirement advice. Industry groups see the SEC as generally more responsive to
their concerns.
SEC Chairman Mary Jo White embraced the idea of a
broad fiduciary rule last month but said her agency is only in the early stages
of crafting its measure. The Labor Department rules are more flexible than a
2010 proposal the department withdrew amid an outcry from Wall Street, which
complained it would have barred many routine payments to brokers, including
commissions.
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