The Massachusetts Securities Division adopted a watered-down fiduciary-rule for broker-dealers, effective March 6, with a compliance deadline of September 1, 2020. The move comes after years of announced intention to do so – especially after the Obama Labor Department’s fiduciary-rule got shot down in the courts.
The Rule requires a broker-dealer to act as a fiduciary for retail customers (excluding institutional accounts and investment advisers) when a broker:
• Has discretion (other than time and price);
• Has undertaken a contractual fiduciary duty; or
• Has ...
The issue over the Fiduciary Rule, and whether it will be implemented, revised, vacated, forgotten, etc. has been ongoing. In March 2018, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of several business groups who challenged the Fiduciary Rule. See (https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/17/17-10238-CV0.pdf).
Specifically, the business groups challenged the Rule on multiple grounds, including:
(a) the Rule's inconsistency with the governing statutes,
(b) DOL's overreaching to regulate services and providers beyond its authority,
(c) DOL's imposition of ...
The Department of Labor has received OMB certification, and sought expedited notice-and-comment, for a rule change that would postpone the full implementation deadline for its Fiduciary Rule from January 1, 2018 until July 1, 2019.
The DOL's Fiduciary Rule became effective June 9, but its transition-period deadline for full implementation of the Best Interest Contract and other requirements was set for January 1, 2018.
This week, the agency published, for quick comment, a proposed rule change extending that full-implementation through July 1, 2019. DOL says it needs the ...
In 2016, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) issued its final rule expanding the "investment advice fiduciary" definition under ERISA and modified the complex of prohibited transaction exemptions for investment activities as a result of the expanded definition. The new rule is scheduled to be implemented starting on April 10, 2017.
There are many opponents to the new rule, who argue that it is one of the most costly, burdensome regulations to be implemented. Joe Wilson, a Republican Congressman from South Carolina, has recently introduced the Protecting American Families ...
Last week, industry groups filed two suits seeking to block the Labor Department's new fiduciary rule governing IRA and other retirement-fund investment recommendations.
In the first, the U.S. and several local Texas Chambers of Commerce and the Securities & Financial Markets Association filed suit in Dallas (in the conservative Fifth Circuit). The suit calls the rule-making a usurpation of SEC authority (and Dodd-Frank's specific authorization of the SEC to promulgate uniform fiduciary standard) that deliberately adopts an unworkable rule, then conditions exemptions from ...
Congress voted this week to de-rail the Department of Labor's sweeping fiduciary-duty suite of rule-making, but doesn't have the votes to override the President's threatened veto. The Rule (over a 1,000 pages in all) imposes a sweeping definition of who owes fiduciary duties to retirement investors in retail IRA, HSA, Roth, Coverdell and other "qualified money" situations and prohibits conflicted transactions (including differential compensation), unless they comply with a series of exceptions, carve-outs and exemptions. Industry groups say the compliance and paperwork ...