Advocacy and lobbying organizations representing the interests of brokers/dealers and investment advisers operating in New Jersey continue to voice their disapproval of the proposed regulations.
The lower chamber has voted to block funding for the SEC to implement and enforce Regulation Best Interest.
By the time the 5th Circuit vacated the DOL fiduciary rule expansion last year, advisory and brokerage firms had spent many millions of dollars to comply with the rule. Congressional Democrats want to know more about what’s happened since.
Under the SEC’s final regulations, Form CRS requires less prescribed wording relative to the proposed version, meaning firms may generally use their own wording to address required topics and will have more flexibility to provide information to investors.
The regulator is taking a disclosure-based approach
All eyes might be on the SEC’s pending vote on Regulation Best Interest, but ERISA attorneys with Stradley Ronon suggest New Jersey is now “the state to watch” for advisers and brokers tracking the development of conflict of interest regulations.
During an exchange on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, the Democratic representative from Ohio pressed DOL Secretary Alexander Acosta for details on how the regulator is addressing advisory industry conflicts of interest.
The state’s former securities chief says recently issued fiduciary regulations have been crafted in the interest of aggressively tamping down on conflicts of interest in the financial services industry.
Out of five witnesses called before the House Subcommittee on Investor Protection, Entrepreneurship and Capital markets, just one spoke favorably about the SEC’s conflict of interest regulations—and his support was conditioned on the SEC taking further action in this area.
The committee says the SEC should explicitly explain that Regulation Best Interest is a fiduciary duty shared equally by advisers and broker/dealer to act in their customers’ best interest.
SEC worked with RAND Corporation to test the efficacy of its mock Customer Relationship Summary form, a key part of the broader Regulation Best Interest proposal; the positive findings differ from reports commissioned by investment industry advocacy groups.
While the Securities and Exchange Commission is firmly controlled by Republican-appointed members, the last Obama-era commissioner says she hopes to find room for compromise to address the pressing issues facing U.S. investors.
Regulation Best Interest lays out the core loyalty and disclosure duties of advisers and broker/dealers—and how these can be satisfied.
Noting that they believe a more viable customer relationship summary (CRS) form can still be developed by the SEC as part of its Regulation Best Interest proposal, a group of retiree and investor advocacy organizations has published a report calling the draft CRS form misleading and unhelpful.