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September 25, 2012 at 08:00 PM
Fi360 told members of Congress recently that asking the Department of Labor (DOL) and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to “harmonize” their fiduciary rules would create “significant challenges,” as the fiduciary standards under securities laws and the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) are “quite different.”
Blaine Aiken, fi360’s CEO, and Duane Thompson, senior policy analyst for fi360, told members of the House Financial Services Committee that if the SEC and DOL were to truly harmonize their rules—something Congress has been pressing the agencies to do—then the agencies would be left with one of two stark choices: require the SEC to impose a higher standard commensurate with ERISA standards, or require the DOL to violate clear legislative requirements under ERISA and thereby weaken the strong fiduciary protections now afforded to retirement plan participants.
Stated another way, Aiken (far left) and Thompson (left) said, “it is our view that an act of Congress is necessary to clear up conflicting areas of the two laws and to provide both agencies with sufficient guidance to proceed if rules harmonization were the primary objective (which, by the way, we believe is neither wise nor consistent with long-standing public policies in this area of law).”
