Key Takeaways
The DOL’s expanded definition of fiduciary advice is explained in the preamble to PTE 2020-02.
When conflicted fiduciary advice is given to retirement investors, that is, retirement plans, participants (including rollovers), and IRA owners (including transfers of IRAs), it results in prohibited transactions under the Internal Revenue Code and ERISA. The prohibited transaction is the compensation earned as a result of the fiduciary recommendation, e.g., the fees or commissions from a rollover IRA.
The PTE provides relief for the prohibitions resulting from conflicted non-discretionary recommendations. However, the relief is conditional, that is, it is only available if all of the PTE’s conditions are satisfied.
The compliance deadline was February 1, 2021 for most of the PTE’s conditions and July 1 for the one remaining condition–the requirement to provide retirement investors in writing with the “specific reasons” why a rollover recommendation is in their best interest.
As a result, the documentation and processes for compliance with PTE 2020-02’s conditions should now be completed. So, this is a good time to consider the liability issues and the opportunities created by the PTE.
Background
The DOL’s prohibited transaction exemption (PTE) 2020-02, Improving Investment Advice for Workers & Retirees, allows investment advisers, broker-dealers, banks, and insurance companies (“financial institutions”), and their representatives (“investment professionals”) to receive conflicted compensation resulting from non-discretionary fiduciary investment advice to ERISA retirement plans, participants (including rollover recommendations), and IRA owners (all of whom are referred to as “retirement investors”). In addition, in the preamble to the PTE the DOL announced an expanded definition of fiduciary advice, meaning that many more financial institutions and investment professionals are fiduciaries for their recommendations to retirement investors and, therefore, will need the protection provided by the exemption.
Since a significantly increased number of recommendations to retirement investors will be fiduciary recommendations under the expanded fiduciary interpretation, and since many, if not most, of those recommendations will involve conflicts of interest, financial institutions and investment professionals will need to satisfy the “conditions” (or requirements) in the PTE. The 4 categories of those conditions are: (1) the Impartial Conduct Standards (including the best interest standard of care); (2) disclosures (including the “specific reasons”), (3) policies and procedures (include mitigation of conflicts), and (4) the annual retrospective review and report.
Continue reading Best Interest Standard of Care for Advisors #100: Liabilities and Opportunities
