As you may know, the Department of Labor recently announced that it was going to re-propose its proposed fiduciary investment advice regulation. As background, that proposal was intended to modify the Department’s current regulation that defines fiduciary investment advice . . . and also intended to expand the definition, so that more people would be viewed as providing fiduciary investment advice under ERISA. However, the proposed regulations had a number of serious problems and, as a result, the financial services industry (and particularly broker-dealers and insurance companies), strenuously objected to the proposed changes. Because of those objections, as well as some congressional support of the objections, the DOL has agreed to re-propose the regulation.

If you are interested in understanding the problems with the initial proposal, I have provided a downloadable copy of my current letter to the Department of Labor. The letter includes a discussion of the changes, as well as some of the problems.

June 22, 2011 letter to DOL re Proposed Fiduciary Advice

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The views expressed in this article are the views of Fred Reish, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Faegre Drinker.