More Comment Time Needed For Fiduciary Redefinition Hot

The Financial Services Institute (FSI) is trying to get more time to comment on the proposed redefinition by the Department of Labor (DOL) regarding fiduciary responsibility. FSI claims some of the data requested by the DOL is not applicable to the issue. It also says the DOL has set deadlines either with very short notice or at times when FSI staff is light due to upcoming holidays.

 

The first attempt at redefinition was scrapped due to an outcry from several industry organizations including the FSI over the prohibitive increase in expenses to investors. As well, the criteria in the redefinition seems to inadequately reflect the fulfillment of fiduciary duty. Reporting data and looking at returns cannot stand alone in sufficiently assessing fiduciary action.

 

Records requested may be buried deep within firms’ systems or may require collection efforts across multiple firm systems, making costs of data collections in the hundreds of thousands or multiple millions of dollars. Records retrieval also may involve tracing client accounts over multiple firms. Data going back to the 10-year time frame requested by the DOL may not be possible to collect since firms have not been required to retain data for that long a period.