Tag Archives: priorities

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 SEC’s 2024 Examination Priorities: Impact on IRAs and Retirement Plans


broker-dealers, DOL, investment adviser, IRA, rollovers, SEC
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Key Takeaways

  • The SEC Division of Examinations is focused on advice to older investors and retirement investors. Advisors and their firms should review their practices for those investors.
  • Among the concerns of the Division of Examinations is whether conflicts are adequately disclosed so that investors can provide informed consent. Off-the-shelf disclosures may not have sufficient information to pass that test.
  • The starting point for making an investment recommendation or providing investment advice is to develop a profile of the investor that considers the information relevant to the investor’s needs and circumstances. The information needed for the profile for retired investors may be different than for accumulation investors. Questionnaires and other information gathering materials should be reviewed to ensure their adequacy for purposes of investors who will regularly withdraw cash for lifelong retirement income from their accounts.

The SEC Division of Examinations recently released its 2024 Examination Priorities (2024-exam-priorities.pdf (sec.gov)). While the Priorities cover a range issues, this article focuses on the Priorities that could impact advice and recommendations by investment advisers and dual registrants (both referred to as advisors in this article)  to  retirement investors. “Retirement Investors” is DOL terminology for investors in retirement plans and IRAs. My interchangeable use of SEC and DOL language is justified by their shared interest in protecting people who are saving and investing for retirement and who are investing and spending in retirement.

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