Daniel Aronowitz, President Donald Trump's pick to head the Labor Department's Employee Benefits Security Administration, which writes retirement policy, was confirmed by the Senate late Thursday on a 51-47 vote.
Aronowitz, founder and managing principal of Euclid Specialty, a company that sells fiduciary insurance to the managers of nonprofit employer benefit plans and multiemployer benefit plans, testified in early June before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee that among his goals as EBSA chief would be to "strive to provide regulatory clarity to the fiduciary rule as applied to IRA rollovers."
Labor plans to issue a fiduciary rule in May 2026, according to its recently released regulatory flexibility agenda.
Retirement planning officials predict Aronowitz may help write a new rule to address fiduciary advice regarding rollovers.
Any potential new rule would focus on how fiduciary rules under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act "apply to advice concerning rollovers to IRAs (including the decision to rollover and where to invest the money)," according to Phyllis Borzi, former head of EBSA during the Obama administration. This "is probably the most controversial aspect" of the current fiduciary rule.
Industry trade groups applauded Aronowitz's confirmation.
Aronowitz’s "experience and expertise in retirement policy and employee benefits will be invaluable in service to EBSA and American workers as they work to build greater financial and retirement security," David Chavern, president and CEO of the American Council of Life Insurers, said in a statement.
The Insured Retirement Institute, the annuity trade group, said it "looks forward to working with him to advance retirement policies that expand workers' and retirees' opportunities to save and provide a protected, sustainable retirement income stream that they cannot outlive," according to a statement by its president and CEO, Wayne Chopus.
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