Tag Archives: investor

SEC 2025 Examination Priorities: Retirees and Rollovers


IRA, rollovers, SEC
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Key Takeaways

    • Over 11,000 people are reaching age 65 every day and most have retired or are contemplating retirement.
    • Many of those retirees will rollover money from retirement plans, including 401(k) plans, into IRAs.
    • The IRA investments will need to provide sustainable retirement income for the lifetimes of those retirees, with regular withdrawals to pay for their costs of living.
    • Many retirees will receive advice from broker-dealers and investment advisers who are subject to SEC regulation and examinations.
    • To compound matters, many of those retirees will, in due course, suffer from diminished cognitive abilities, reducing their ability to evaluate the advice they are being given.
    • The cumulative effect of these factors is that the SEC is focusing on advice to retirees and older investors, as reflected in the 2025 Examination Priorities.

The SEC’s Division of Examinations issued its 2025 Exam Priorities a few months ago. 2025-exam-priorities.pdf

Many articles have been written about those priorities, but none—at least that I have seen—have addressed the focus on retirees, older investors and rollovers. This article fills that gap.

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The New Fiduciary Rule (8): Special Issues—Robo Advice and Investment Education


DOL, fiduciary, IRA
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The U.S. Department of Labor has released its package of proposed changes to the regulation defining fiduciary advice and to the exemptions for conflicts and compensation for investment advice to plans, participants (including rollovers), and IRAs (including transfers).

Key Takeaways

  • The Department of Labor’s proposed regulation defining fiduciary investment and insurance advice to private sector retirement plans, participants in those plans, and IRA owners (collectively, “retirement investors”) includes three distinct definitions.
  • While the current version of PTE 2020-02 does not extend relief for prohibited transactions resulting from robo advice (that is, it requires a human intermediary), the proposal would extend the PTE’s protections to conflicts of interest (that is, prohibited transactions) so long as the conditions of the exemption are satisfied.
  • Some commenters have suggested that the new definitions of fiduciary status and of covered transactions are so broad that investment education would be considered fiduciary advice. To be polite, that is an exaggeration.

My last post, The New Fiduciary Rule (7), discuss the “non-discretionary” definition of fiduciary investment advice in the DOL’s proposed fiduciary regulation. The other two definitions of fiduciary status are covered by my posts The New Fiduciary Rule (5) and The New Fiduciary Rule (6).

The proposed definition of non-discretionary fiduciary advice is a material change from the current regulation because it eliminates the 5-part test, including the requirement that advice be given to the particular retirement investor on a “regular basis.” In other words, a one-time recommendation can be fiduciary advice under this definition. (The definition is somewhat more demanding that just “one-time advice,” but I will refer to it as one-time advice for purposes of this article. If you want to know more about the detailed definition, look at my last post.)

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The New Fiduciary Rule (7): Non-Discretionary Investment Advice


2020-02, best interest, DOL, fiduciary
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The U.S. Department of Labor has released its package of proposed changes to the regulation defining fiduciary advice and to the exemptions for conflicts and compensation for investment advice to plans, participants (including rollovers), and IRAs (including transfers).

Key Takeaways

  • The Department of Labor’s proposed regulation defining fiduciary investment and insurance advice to private sector retirement plans, participants in those plans, and IRA owners (collectively, “retirement investors”) includes three distinct definitions.
  • Those definitions are discretionary investment management, non-discretionary investment advice, and acknowledgement of fiduciary status.
  • The most controversial of these proposals is the new definition of non-discretionary investment advice. If an investment adviser, broker-dealer, or insurance agent (“investment professional”) satisfies that definition, the investment professional will be a fiduciary under ERISA and the Internal Revenue Code.

This post discusses the “non-discretionary” definition of fiduciary investment advice in the DOL’s proposed fiduciary regulation. The other two definitions of fiduciary status are covered by my posts The New Fiduciary Rule (5) and The New Fiduciary Rule (6).

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The New Fiduciary Rule (6): The Fiduciary Definition of Fiduciary


DOL, fiduciary, investment adviser, IRA
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The US Department of Labor has released its package of proposed changes to the regulation defining fiduciary advice and to the exemptions for conflicts and compensation for investment advice to plans, participants (including rollovers), and IRAs (including transfers of IRAs).

Key Takeaways

  • The Department of Labor’s proposed regulation defining fiduciary investment and insurance/annuity advice to private sector retirement plans, participants in those plans, and IRA owners (collectively, “retirement investors”) includes three distinct definitions.
  • Those definitions are: discretionary investment management, non-discretionary investment advice, and acknowledgement of fiduciary status. In each of those cases, the person and the firm will be fiduciaries under ERISA and the Internal Revenue Code for purposes of their investment recommendations and services to retirement investors.
  • A new definition in the proposal, and one that is not likely to be controversial, is the third one….a person will be a fiduciary for investment recommendations if that person says that the person and/or the firm are acting as fiduciaries for the recommendation.

This post discusses the “fiduciary acknowledgement” definition of fiduciary investment advice in the DOL’s proposed fiduciary regulation. More specifically, the proposed regulation says that a person will be an ERISA and Code fiduciary if “The person making the recommendation represents or acknowledges that they are acting as a fiduciary when making investment recommendations.” (There will be future articles discussing “investment recommendations”, but for the moment, consider it to be a recommendation for a retirement investor to invest in securities, insurance or other property.)

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The New Fiduciary Rule (5): Discretionary Investment Management


2020-02, 84-24, DOL, fiduciary, investment adviser, IRA
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The US Department of Labor has released its package of proposed changes to the regulation defining nondiscretionary fiduciary advice and to the exemptions for conflicts and compensation for investment recommendations to retirement plans, participants (including rollovers), and IRAs.

Key Takeaways

  • The Department of Labor’s proposed regulation defining fiduciary investment and insurance advice to private sector retirement plans, participants in those plans, and IRA owners (collectively, “retirement investors”) includes three distinct definitions.
  • Those definitions are discretionary investment management, nondiscretionary investment advice, and acknowledgement of fiduciary status.
  • The least controversial definition is that, when an investment professional provides investment management, or discretionary, services to retirement investors, the investment professional will be a fiduciary under ERISA and the Internal Revenue Code.

This post discusses the “discretionary” definition of fiduciary investment advice in the DOL’s proposed fiduciary regulation.

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