EBSA Head Aronowitz Says DOL Ended ‘Fiduciary Rule Madness’

Daniel Aronowitz, head of the Department of Labor’s Employee Benefits Security Administration, defended the DOL’s changes to fiduciary regulations and its legal interventions in litigation during his opening keynote speech in Nashville on Monday at the 2026 PLANSPONSOR National Conference, organized by PLANADVISER’s sister publication.

Aronowitz highlighted the DOL’s restoration of the 1975 five-part test for determining when someone is an investment advice fiduciary, as well as efforts to reduce “meritless cases” and end “fiduciary rule madness” resulting from more than 15 years of shifting rules and court challenges.

During his remarks, Aronowitz said the Securities and Exchange Commission and state insurance regulators should regulate individual market activity involving individual retirement accounts and annuities, while EBSA would focus on employer-based retirement plans.

Aronowitz also touted the agency’s recent technical advice release regarding proxy advisers and fiduciary obligations. He said retirement assets must be managed for the “exclusive purpose” of providing benefits and that “exclusive means exclusive.” The DOL released guidance in April that stated proxy advisers “regularly fit the definition of functional fiduciaries” under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act.

In March, the Retirement Security Rule established under former President Joe Biden in 2024, which set a new fiduciary standard that expanded fiduciary obligations under ERISA, was officially vacated. It had included professionals providing one-time professional retirement investment advice, such as rollovers into individual retirement accounts, annuity purchases and plan menu design. During President Donald Trump’s current term, the DOL stopped defending the rule in court.

‘Asset-Neutral’ Investment Rule

Turning to the DOL’s proposed rule on retirement plan investment selection, Aronowitz said that the U.S. voluntary employer-sponsored benefits system depends on giving fiduciaries more room to exercise judgment without fear that every good-faith decision will be second-guessed in court.

“We want more employers to offer more benefits and more inventive ones at that,” Aronowitz said in the speech.

One enforcement priority EBSA’s head cited as an example is the proposed rule on fiduciary duties in investment selection, including private market and other alternative assets in defined contribution plans. Although the rule offers more than just a potential safe harbor for adding alternative investments, Aronowitz emphasized that plan administrators should be able to introduce innovative investment options. 

The agency has received more than 45,000 comments on the proposed rule. The comment period was scheduled to close just before midnight on June 1.

Aronowitz emphasized that the rule is “asset neutral” and does not endorse private equity, private credit or any other investment product. Instead, he said it would protect fiduciaries who follow it a prudent process to protect them from hindsight-based litigation attacks.

“ERISA is a law of process,” Aronowitz said, arguing that fiduciaries should receive “maximum deference” when they document a diligent decisionmaking process in the ways the proposed rule describes.

Probes Subject to ‘Shot Clock’

Aronowitz also underscored the agency’s attempt at an enforcement reset. Aronowitz pointed to EBSA’s Field Assistance Bulletin 2026-01, which states that its investigators should prioritize egregious conduct, significant harm, criminal cases and participant contribution failures. He also said investigations would be subject to a “shot clock” and that open-ended probes dragging on for years are over.

The agency’s updated enforcement priorities include cybersecurity; mental health and substance use disorder benefits; benefit distributions; retirement asset management; surprise billing; and criminal abuse of contributory benefit plans. At the same time, Aronowitz said EBSA will de-emphasize missing-participant cases and employee stock ownership plan valuation investigations. Ending “the war on ESOPs” was a key point of his testimony during his confirmation hearings last year.

“We will no longer make plan sponsors spend more than account balances in futile, repeated searches for missing participants,” he said.

While Aronowitz outlined the agency’s agenda, which he stressed was pro-ERISA and not biased toward participants or plan sponsors, he saved some of his strongest language for ERISA class action lawsuits, particularly excessive fee, forfeiture and pension risk transfer cases. Regarding those types of cases, he argued that many legal complaints generate large attorneys’ fees, while participants receive modest recoveries, and that the threat of litigation discourages employers from adopting innovative plan designs. He compared the typical award a participant might receive in a settlement to the cost of a round of golf while coming at a significant cost to the employer providing the benefits.

He said EBSA is not trying to limit workers’ rights to sue when harm is real, but it will continue to file amicus briefs to push back against plaintiffs in cases the agency views as meritless or inconsistent with ERISA’s text. During Aronowitz’s tenure, the DOL has submitted several briefs in cases concerning plan forfeitures and pension risk transfers, for example. 

Aronowitz closed by casting EBSA’s agenda as a three-part promise: restore discretion to plan sponsors; end regulation by enforcement; and attack regulation by litigation.

“I oversee the best EBSA ever, and we are just getting started,” he said.