Friday was a big day for some of the pieces of regulations we've been waiting on.
As we posted on the blog Friday afternoon, 408(b)(2) rules are apparently being pulled altogether. You can stay tuned for the fall out from that development sometime after the new administration takes office.
Also on Friday, the DOL announced that final rules for investment advice for 401k plans and IRAs would be published this Wednesday. The rules will include the controversial "regulation that implements the new statutory exemption for investment advice added to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) by the Pension Protection Act (PPA) and a related class exemption."
The exemption has caused a fairly vocal opposition. Soon after the regulations were proposed, our CEO, Blaine Aikin, wrote in his Fiduciary Corner column that the exemption allows commission-based brokers to function as fiduciaries and not give up their conflicted positions. Rep. George Miller (D-CA) has been the most vocal opponent within government. And, the majority of the dissapproving comments in the public commenting period on these rules focused on the allowance of conflicted advice.
If you go to the DOL's EBSA proposed rules section of their website and navigate around, you can find the most of the available information on the rules thusfar. Otherwise, we'll see on Wednesday if any changes have been put into place since the proposed rules were first published and public hearings were held.
We will leave you with this advice from Blaine's original column on the subject, "Advisers who fully em-brace a fiduciary standard of care and consistently apply fiduciary practices don't need exemptions from prohibited transactions, be-cause their business model is designed to avoid them."
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