What a week! Many things about this week are extraordinary, game changing, and uncertain - so naturally everyone has a lot of new questions to think about. One of the questions our industry has right now, is “How will the election results affect the DOL Fiduciary Rule?” To start attempting to find an answer to this complicated and important question, we turned to our resident expert and Chief Compliance Officer, Barry Champney for some of his initial insights.
First things first, Barry explained that there have been many stories over the last few days about the possibility that the DOL Rule will be overturned due to the election of Donald Trump. His first suggestion, educate yourself.
Here are a few pieces of content from Barry’s Reading List that will help to navigate through the confusion:
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Financial Adviser Rule could be in Trump's crosshairs
This first article by Timothy Weatherhead of The Hill outlines his belief that the new administration will be looking to suspend or outright terminate the fiduciary rule.
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Election Results May Not Trump The DOL Rule
This piece by Christopher Robbins of Financial Advisor magazine cites those who believe it will be much more difficult than most people believe to eliminate the rule.
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Where Donald Trump stands on top financial adviser issues
Mark Schoeff, Jr. of Investment News provides some clues as to where Trump stands on this and other issues.
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Trump, GOP Could Torpedo DOL Rule, Dodd-Frank
In this last of today’s articles, the staff at Think Advisor takes the position that the Financial CHOICE Act will lead to the repeal of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law and the end of the DOL’s fiduciary rule.
Barry has been monitoring the DOL Rule for about a year and a half now and has become very well acquainted with the issue having even participated in a recent DOL Roundtable discussion with other CCO’s, attorneys and CEO’s from around the country. He says, “The change may affect the DOL Fiduciary Rule, Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), SEC Leadership, Federal Reserve Leadership, Dodd-Frank Act, Tax Reform, Entitlement Reform and other areas yet-to-be-seen. We are working closely with our DOL Keynote Speaker, Lisa Roth of Monahan & Roth, LLC, who met this week with the new head of FINRA, Robert Cook. She encouraged the regulators to develop a Task Force to address the issue and to come up with 4 or 5 workable concepts that will help the Independent Broker Dealers to move forward with greater surety.” Lisa is an industry expert who has served on numerous FINRA Committees and Review Boards.
This is just our first chat with Barry, there is still so much to come to light around this issue and so many possibilities. Barry promises, “Keep following this blog. We’ll keep you updated.”
Have specific questions or thoughts? Fire away & let's discuss!
