Half of all Americans plan to use
Facebook to share memories of their vacations this year, according to an annual
vacation spending survey from Fatwallet.com. More than two out of three vacationers
younger than 30 will share their vacation pictures with friends and family on
the social media platform.
Almost half plan to share vacation
photos via email; 14% say they’ll use Instagram (42% for those under 30); and
6% plan to use Twitter (14% for those younger than 30).
Eight in 10 Americans take
vacations, and more than 60% will go on at least one this year. One in four go
more than once a year. This jumps to one in three for those with annual income
exceeding $75,000, while one in five said they never go on vacation. Nearly two
in five with annual income less than $30,000 say they do not take vacations.
Among other findings:
42% will spend $1,500 or more on
vacations this year;
74% say they save money via online
for travel deals and/or use bonus miles, points, cash-back rewards and timely credit
card offers;
60% book one to six months ahead
and 14% book more than six months ahead;
Family and friends have the most
influence on half of all respondents for finding vacation and travel information;
Breakfast buffets, WiFi and parking
lead the list of desirable hotel freebies; and
Most (74%) use a laptop to book the
next vacation, and more than half (55%) plan to buy clothing, shoes and
accessories for the getaway.
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The DOL’s proposed fiduciary rule is complex and wide-reaching, one experienced ERISA attorney tells PLANADVISER, so the financial industry needs more time to digest the potential implications.
“My overall impression is that there is a ton of material to
go through and that it’s going to take real time for business folks and other
practitioners like myself to go through all this and fully digest it, and to
understand and appreciate all the implications,” Russ Hirschhorn, senior
counsel in the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) practice center
and the labor/employment law department of Proskauer, comments about the
Department of Labor’s (DOL) proposed regulations about fiduciary investment
advice.
As a global benefits law firm with a substantial presence in
the U.S. that extends into both the institutional and individual investing
spaces, Hirschhorn notes that Proskauer is taking the new fiduciary rule language very
seriously. “The DOL has limited its comment period to just a couple of months,
so the pressure is on,” Hirschhorn says.
“The firm works with clients across the retirement plan
services spectrum, so we issued an in-depth client alert that
will be helpful reading for anyone looking to get caught up on the rulemaking
language,” he notes. But even after putting together the informative fiduciary
rule language summary, he and other ERISA experts at Proskauer believe its “far
too soon to know on net whether this is going to help things or hurt things
overall,” or if a strengthened fiduciary rule will truly protect retirement
plan participants on the ground and bring more transparency and fairness to the
financial system in the way the DOL is hoping.
“Many of the people you see speaking in the media, they are
up to their eyeballs in the language just like we are,” he continues. “They are
at some amount of peril when they make broad statements about where this is all
going to end up, not least because it’s still a proposed rule. The important to
thing to understand now is that a lot of people are approaching this from a lot
of different angles and points of interest. I don’t think the financial industry
is prepared to say today whether this is a catastrophe or a victory, or
somewhere in between, and from whose perspective and why.”
But some things are becoming clearer, Hirschhorn says. “For
example, one concern that I still carry based off the things I’m reading is
whether the business folks at advisory firms will be less inclined to keep
serving the small balance markets, especially the small balance individual
retirement account [IRA] market,” he says. “Whether that’s going to result in
less advice or no advice, I can’t say yet, but the proposed rule does seem to
put some pressure on there. It’s something that we are exploring further, and I
expect to formulate a deeper opinion soon.”
Something else that is clear, Hirschhorn says, is that the
rule language has “changed pretty substantially since the highly controversial
2010 version,” and interestingly the text of the proposal itself explains a
lot of this and the thinking behind it from DOL. These changes have caused some
to opine that the DOL has capitulated in critical ways to industry lobbying
pressure, but Hirschhorn is not committed to that opinion yet.
“I think that the industry and the lobbyists on both sides
of the new rulemaking language have achieved some of the things they wanted,
and perhaps have not achieved some of the other things they wanted,” he
explains. “There is definitely a give and take going on.”
One example he cited: the initial 2010 proposal would have
made employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) valuations a fiduciary action—much to
the chagrin of the financial services interests—and this seems to have been
directly addressed under the new rule language, such that ESOP valuations get a
specific fiduciary “carve-out.”
“There are also numerous carve-outs and prohibited
transaction exemptions and other forms of blanket exemptions that seem to be
partly a response to earlier industry criticism,” Hirschhorn says. “In another
example, it seems there is a new blanket exemption that will apply to call
center employees fielding calls and answering general questions from plan
participants. But will these call center employees be able to render specific
advice on products or transactions? That’s less clear at this point, and the
interpretation of these things could change under revisions to the language or
through supplemental guidance, as well, so that’s important to consider.”
Hirschhorn continues: “Many of the changes that have been
made since the 2010 version are being interpreted as industry successes—that
industry lobbyists have successfully pushed back against the DOL in some
areas—and I would agree with that to an extent. But did the industry get
everything it wanted and will there be no hiccups for advisers and brokers from
the business perspective? I doubt it—we’re going to have to see.”
Hirschhorn agreed with speculation that, since neither
consumer protection groups nor the financial services industry is claiming
total victory or defeat in the fiduciary fight, it can be surmised that the DOL
is slowly but surely closing in on a workable fiduciary redefinition. (See "Changes
Plan Sponsors Would See Under Fiduciary Proposal.")
“Since suffering such a backlash in 2010, the DOL has
recognized that it’s hugely important for it to at least present the image that
it is listening carefully to all sides and considering what everyone has said
on this fiduciary stuff,” Hirschhorn says. “They want the industry to know that
they have heard the concerns, and that they have taken action to address the
concerns in a way they thought was appropriate. Despite this, some folks in the
industry clearly think this is going to turn into a no-advice rule, once it’s
implemented, and still others have suggested the prohibited transaction exemptions
are being set up as overly broad loopholes that will allow negative practices
to continue. It’s all ongoing.”
One other area that’s becoming clearer, he concludes, is
that the DOL isn’t the only regulatory body making consumer protection a
priority. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has signaled
it could move sooner rather than later on its own changes to
investment advice and conflict of interest rules that would apply beyond the
Employee Retirement Income Security Act.
Media reports have cited comments from SEC Chair Mary Jo
White, to the effect that the SEC will “implement a uniform fiduciary duty for
broker/dealers and investment advisers where the standard is to act in the best
interest of the investor.” Few additional details have emerged about the
effort, especially given the groundswell of attention following the DOL's new
rule language.
“The SEC has said it is developing its own fiduciary rule,
while DOL has said that it has consulted extensively with SEC and other federal
regulators and self-regulation bodies like FINRA—to make sure it’s not making
things unworkable for the industry it’s supposed to be improving,” Hirschhorn
says. “At the moment it seems that we are still pretty far off, very far off
from anything like a unified fiduciary standard across these bodies, but you
can see the early stirrings of that type of an effort.”