Fiduciary Links: Senate's answer to regulatory reform released

Since its release in mid October, much of the financial services regulatory reform discussion has focused on the House Financial Services Committee's Investor Protection Act. That is until Tuesday, when the Senate Banking Committee released their Restoring American Financial Stability Act. In her post last Wednesday, Kristina explained that the major difference in how the bills address the fiduciary issue is that the House bill would add provisions to the Securities Exchange Act that would require brokers who provide advice to meet the same standards as advisers while the Senate bill would remove the broker-dealer exemption from the Investment Advisers Act and require all brokers to register as advisers. Each has presented a different way to solve the same problem, and each one offers different challenges to overcome, as evidenced by the reactions coming from advocacy groups for advisers, brokers, the insurance industry, consumers, etc. For his part, Barney Frank of the House Committee said he liked the Senate's bill and was encouraged that both were moving in the same direction.

Here are more links related to the Senate bill:

• Dodd's regulatory reform bill would eliminate broker-dealer exemption
• Dodd's plan would also let SEC decide if mandatory arbitration is permissible
• Advisers support Dodd's bill
• Dodd's bill may require insurance agents to register as advisers
• Is the Senate over-regulating?
• Is Dodd picking fights?
• Dodd bill would make brokers fiduciaries, SIFMA prefers House option

On to the rest of the links...  

In the news/commentary:

• "Congress must establish baseline competency, practice and ethical standards for planners"
• Fiduciaries can fix what's wrong with target date funds
• Caterpillar 401(k) fee lawsuit settlement good news for future fee litigation
• Ethics can hedge risk and make your firm more profitable

From the organizations/associations/government/academia:

• Fiduciary Benchmarks can now benchmark 98% of all 401(k)s
• Life insurance industry weighs in on Investor Protection Act, seek more protections for commissioned sales people
• Advisers, consumer groups, state regulators all applaud Frank's plan to contest IPA provision for FINRA oversight of broker-affiliated advisers
• On top of all the other good reasons for fiduciary protections, a paper from University of Windsor says they are efficient

From the blogs:

• Brokers need to prepare for a fiduciary world
• Fiduciary News interviews Bright Scope's Ryan Alfred
• Investors make mistakes, not investments

Tweet of the week:

• @pitiso: @ Accredited Investment Fiduciary Analyst training in FL. Ida on its way but we're sticking to class. Well worth it.

Have a link we missed? Leave them in the comments section or email us at blog@fi360.com. For more of the best links during the week, make sure you follow us on Twitter.