Labor Department headquarters in Washington. (Photo: Mike Scarcella/ALM)
The Labor Department will propose in the summer or fall of this year — after the Securities and Exchange Commission finalizes its Regulation Best Interest for brokers — guidance on when a rollover recommendation constitutes fiduciary advice, as well as an exemption for compliance with Reg BI, attorneys at Stradley Ronon predict.
The attorneys, part of Stradley Ronon's Fiduciary Governance Group, write in their Jan. 7 blog post, "A Fiduciary's 2018 Retrospective (and Predictions for 2019)," that given the fact that Labor's fiduciary rule was vacated, the original five-part test now determines whether an advisor is an investment advice fiduciary under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act.
"We expect that the DOL will issue interpretive guidance, and propose exemptive relief, in the summer or fall of 2019" that will "most likely address the circumstances under which rollover recommendations constitute fiduciary investment advice," the attorneys, including David Grim, the former director of the SEC's Division of Investment Management, write in their Risk & Reward blog.
The proposed Labor exemption, meanwhile, "will probably apply to services and products that the DOL views as presenting fewer conflicts of interest, one of the conditions being adherence to the final form of Regulation Best Interest."
While the attorneys state that they can't "completely predict whether multiple exemptions will be proposed, we can say, with some level of confidence, that the DOL is quite unlikely to modify the five-part test for when one becomes an investment advice fiduciary. We do not think the DOL has the appetite or bandwidth to do that."
The attorneys believe that Reg BI will be finalized "this spring — or fall at the latest — largely intact. We would not be surprised if the SEC opted to provide examples of how firms can meet their best-interest duties, while still avoiding the rhetorical exercise of trying to define them."
