When one visits the doctor, it gives great comfort to know that the physician has taken the “hippocratic oath” to do no harm, and always put the patient’s needs first. If a specific treatment option, prescription, or advice were given because a doctor had been financially incentivized to do so, it would be a betrayal of that oath. It would erode trust, and irreparably harm the doctor-patient relationship. In financial services, however, there is no hippocratic oath. Over the past few years, we have seen efforts to delineate who is actually a fiduciary and what the responsibility of an advisor is to their client. Here, we take you down a review of what has transpired out of the recent regulatory changes and how it may impact financial professionals and their clients in the future.
Investment Advisers Act – The Beginning
The Investment Advisers Act of 1940 established regulations on investment advisers. It states who needs to be registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (now firms with over $100 million in assets under management), as well as the role and responsibilities of investment advisers to their clients. Current regulations have been built on top of this legislation in an attempt to modernize how advisers interact with their clients, as well as the expectations of a certain level of care and limits to conflicts of interest.
DOL Fiduciary Rule – The First Attempt
In 2015, President Obama made it clear that he supported rulemaking that required retirement advice to follow a fiduciary standard. His administration tasked the Department of Labor to develop a framework to establish rules, which involved an extensive amount of feedback from financial advisors, the general public, and the regulators. Out of this came the DOL Fiduciary Rule in 2015, to be implemented in 2016. The rule required advisors to disclose any financial compensation from outside sources due to their recommendations, put their clients’ needs first in all advice, and seek to avoid conflicts of interest. This included receiving commissions, 12b-1 fees (trails paid by mutual fund companies to the advisor or firm), receiving “referral fees” and required any fees collected to be a “fee for service” or an “asset management” fee that was not dependent upon the advice rendered.
This had a potentially massive impact on 401(k) plan advisors, which were not required to be fiduciaries on their plans previously if they accepted commissions and were acting as “registered representatives” (in contrast to fee-only investment advisors, who must act as fiduciaries). Additionally, the DOL Fiduciary Rule was supposed to impact IRA assets as well, which are not covered by ERISA. This was a major bone of contention, as the Department of Labor was essentially regulating a type of asset over which it arguably had no jurisdiction.
The DOL Fiduciary Rule was one of the first attempts to require financial advisors who received commission-based compensation and the firms that employed them to put their clients first in the eyes of the law. It was intended to help bridge the gap between the appearance of being a fiduciary and actually having to act as one.
Just because it may have been welcomed by some in the investment advice industry and many in the general public does not mean it was a popular rule, however. Investment companies saw it as a compliance nightmare and a threat to their revenues, particularly in commission-based products. Additionally, it would have granted much greater regulatory power to the Department of Labor over financial advisors and related investment and financial advice-giving companies. There was considerable pushback as a result, and once the Trump administration became involved, the rule was in peril. The implementation was delayed multiple times and, ultimately, killed off in 2018 by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Regulation Best Interest, Form CRS, Standard of Conduct for Investment Advisers
After the ultimate failure of the DOL Fiduciary Rule, the SEC began their attempt to modernize regulations and disclosures in regards to broker-dealers, as well as registered investment advisors. In 2019, the SEC adopted a package of rulemaking and interpretations called SEC Regulation Best Interest, or “Reg BI”, that allowed advisors and firms to enter into “Best Interest” contracts that disclosed the conflict of interest that existed if they received any other types of compensation other than the types allowed under the fiduciary rule.
According to the SEC, “Under Regulation Best Interest, broker-dealers will be required to act in the best interest of a retail customer when making a recommendation of any securities transaction or investment strategy involving securities to a retail customer. Regulation Best Interest will enhance the broker-dealer standard of conduct beyond existing suitability obligations and make it clear that a broker-dealer may not put its financial interests ahead of the interests of a retail customer when making recommendations.”
Additionally, Form CRS became a required document for both registered investment advisors and broker-dealers. This document was designed to offer a plain English view of the services offered by the investment professional, how compensation and fees work, and any disciplinary history the financial professional has faced. To view an example of this, here is the Form CRS for our firm.
The SEC also issued their interpretation of the standards of conduct for investment advisers (which, incidentally, is a really well-written document). The goal of this appeared to be a restatement of what is expected of investment advisers – a duty of care and a duty of loyalty. They reaffirmed that an investment adviser is a fiduciary and must act in the client’s best interest at all times. A contrast was made between broker-dealers and investment advisers in that their compensation models may be different, namely the ability to accept commissions in a broker-dealer environment, which causes a separate and distinct difference in the conflicts of interest present and the necessary disclosure.
Regulation Best Interest and Form CRS were implemented with a compliance date of 6/30/2020. The standards of conduct were effective on 7/12/2019.
Code of Ethics and Standards – The Fiduciary Update by the CFP® Board
Seeing a regulatory hole between the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 and a fiduciary standard, the CFP Board has established a set of fiduciary guidelines and rules that govern CFP® professionals. The last major update of these standards was in 2007. Around the same time of developing Reg BI, The Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards developed the Code of Ethics and Standards of Conduct. This went into effect in October of 2019 with enforcement beginning on June 30, 2020.
According to the CFP Board, “This is a significant strengthening of the prior standard, which required a CFP® professional to act as a fiduciary only when providing financial planning. The fiduciary obligation includes a duty of loyalty, a duty of care, and a duty to follow client instructions. Other important changes in the Code and Standards include more detailed requirements for fully disclosing material conflicts of interest, obtaining informed consent, and managing those conflicts.”
The most important part of this update to the rule is the expansion of fiduciary duty to act in the best interests for clients in all situations, not just during the financial planning process. For advisors that hold a CFP® designation, those that are employed at broker-dealers and insurance companies may find new challenges in meeting this fiduciary standard, particularly if they continue to sell commission-based products.
DOL Fiduciary Rule – Take Two is On The Way
In 2018, the Department of Labor Fiduciary rule was ordered to be sent back to the drawing board to review the viability and come up with any revisions. In January of this year, the DOL sent the revised rules to the OMB (Office of Management and Budget) and in June they were announced. In a shocking move, it was recommended that an exemption that offers “a new prohibited transaction class exemption for investment advice fiduciaries.” This would allow financial advisors and fiduciaries potentially to receive compensation such as commissions, 12b-1 fees, mark-up and mark-down compensation, sales loads, and revenue sharing compensation. This would impact both ERISA accounts (example: 401k plans) and IRAs.
Under the goal of maintaining regulatory efficiency, transactions that are compliant under Regulation BI would be deemed as meeting with DOL Fiduciary Rule standard. A loophole seems to exist in the rule for insurance professionals, which sell annuities inside of retirement plans for a commission. According to the initial proposal, it appears a fiduciary relationship does not exist in a one-time transaction with no expectation of ongoing review as well as no requirements to comply with Regulation BI if one is not a Registered Representative.
As before with the original DOL Fiduciary Rule, this has come under some criticism. In an article from Thinkadvisor, “Barbara Roper, director of investor protection for the Consumer Federation of America, said the rule ‘reopens loopholes in the definition of fiduciary investment advice, making the standard easy to evade. It creates a new exemption to allow advisers to get conflicted compensation, subject only to Reg BI’s weak, non-fiduciary standard.’”
What Does This Rulemaking and Regulation Actually Seek to Accomplish?
First off – are you completely confused yet? If the answer is “yes”, you are not alone. The original DOL Fiduciary Rule by the Obama Administration was definitely a nod towards bringing more investment professionals under a more uniform fiduciary standard. As it failed and Reg BI was implemented, a more “fiduciary lite” version was put into its place. This is likely to follow when the rules are finalized for the new version of the DOL rule.
Where this goes from here will likely depend on what happens after the presidential election, and where the regulatory winds are focused. There is a chance that this nod to increased focus on conflicts of interest and disclosure will eventually lead to a uniform fiduciary standard at some point for all financial “advisors” — meaning insurance, broker-dealer, and investment advisers. The other possibility is that we continue to see the bifurcation in fiduciary standards applied to these groups, as we have in the most recent series of rulemaking.
One thing is clear to us – the best way to insure that you are working with someone who is working in your best interest and acting as a fiduciary is to hire a financial advisor that works at a fee-only firm and does not accept commissions from the sale of investment products at any time. Additionally, working with a CFP® that follows strict standards of care may also be something that investors seek out when they are looking for a long-term relationship with a financial professional whose practice centers their financial well-being.
Jonathon Jordan, CFP®
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