Barbara Roper's Former Role Is Filled by a Familiar Face
After a stint at the SEC, Micah Hauptman is returning to the Consumer Federation of America.
Micah Hauptman, who previously served as counsel to Securities and Exchange Commissioner Caroline Crenshaw, is returning to the Consumer Federation of America as director of investor protection.
Hauptman was the consumer group’s financial services counsel for nearly seven years working on investor protection advocacy before being appointed as counsel in Crenshaw’s office in September 2020.
Hauptman succeeds Barbara Roper, who led the group’s investor protection efforts for 35 years and is now senior counsel to SEC Chairman Gary Gensler.
“I’m excited to return to CFA, whose mission and work I have deep pride in, and passion for,” Hauptman said in a statement. “I look forward to collaborating with my dedicated CFA colleagues and continuing Barb Roper’s establishment of CFA as the nation’s leader on investor protection.”
Hauptman told ThinkAdvisor Thursday in an email that “CFA’s investor protection priorities will continue to focus on advocating for retail investors. This includes urging the DOL to update and strengthen its fiduciary rule and urging the SEC to implement Regulation Best Interest in a way that delivers the meaningful protections that investors need and deserve.”
CFA joined other consumer groups in urging Labor to “expeditiously update and strengthen the rules governing retirement investment advice to help protect workers and retirees from harmful conflicts of interest.”
Retirement savers suffer these losses because the existing regulatory regime “makes it easy for retirement investment advice providers to avoid fiduciary responsibility even when retirement savers are relying on them as trusted advisers,” the Save Our Retirement coalition wrote in a letter to Ali Khawar, Acting Assistant Secretary for the Labor’s Employee Benefits Security Administration.
The coalition urged Labor to “update and eliminate … loopholes in the current definition of ‘fiduciary investment advice’ to align the new rule with the letter and spirit of ERISA and protect retirement savers who are predominantly covered by individual account plans.”
Pictured: Micah Hauptman