SEC will develop fiduciary duty rule for brokers, White says

(Bloomberg) — U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Mary Jo White said the agency will develop stricter rules for brokers, wading into a battle between Wall Street and the White House, which says biased financial advice is costing investors billions of dollars.

White’s remarks follow a Labor Department move to make brokers put the interests of retirement savers ahead of their own, a so-called fiduciary duty. The SEC, which oversees the brokerage industry as a whole, has studied the issue for years without taking any regulatory action.

The SEC should “implement a uniform fiduciary duty for broker-dealers and investment advisers where the standard is to act in the best interest of the investor,” White said Tuesday at a securities industry conference in Phoenix.