Industry News
Dodd-Frank’s Banking Rules Rolled Back
It was another one of President Trump’s early promises: an overhaul of the Dodd-Frank law that significantly tightened rules on banks and other financial institutions after the Great Recession of 2008. On Tuesday, May 22, 2018, it happened. In a rare bipartisan vote, Congress passed changes to the Dodd-Frank law which is expected to be […]
Message from the CEO: The DOL is Asking the Right Questions of Itself
After the furious amount of writing about the Department of Labor’s Fiduciary Rule over the last several months, we recently found ourselves in a lull period following the temporarily revised rule and implementation date of June 10, 2017. The current and provisional status of the Best Interest Contract Exemption (BICE) and Prohibited Transaction Exemption 84-24 […]
Message from the CEO: The DOL Will NOT Extend the Fiduciary Rule Delay
In a Wall Street Journal OpEd released last night, Labor Department Secretary Alexander Acosta addressed the controversial DOL Fiduciary Rule to be applied to the placement of Qualified funds by stating, “We have carefully considered the record in this case, and the requirements of the Administrative Procedures Act, and have found no principled legal basis […]
Message from the CEO: DOL Fiduciary Rule Final Extension – Maybe
On April 7th of 2017, just seven days after the new Secretary of the Department of Labor (DOL) Alexander Acosta was confirmed, the department responded to President Trump’s executive memorandum to conduct a detailed analysis of the department’s Fiduciary Rule. The response resulted in the delaying of the applicability date from the previously scheduled April […]
Message from the CEO: A DOL Update for our Partners
Last week, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released a proposal from the Department of Labor (DOL) for a 60 day extension on the applicability date of the DOL Fiduciary Rule. As you know, the currently scheduled effective date is April 10, 2017. As a result of the proposal, we are now in the […]
Message from the CEO: The Latest on the DOL Fiduciary Rule
As we crawl ever closer to the effective date of the DOL Fiduciary Rule in April, I think we’re due for an update on the latest news as it relates to the rule. As you may well know, the DOL Fiduciary Rule applies to all qualified funds which include qualified plans, IRAs, and other types of […]
Designed to Fail? An Update on the DOL Regulation
On September 23rd, InvestmentNews published an article titled “DOL fiduciary rule to cost the securities industry $11B by 2020: study” with most of the cost borne by independent broker-dealers. While recently speaking with a large independent broker-dealer, they shared with us that they have allocated 7,000 hours of information technology (IT) work for 2017 to […]
A Europe of Many Cultures or a European Culture?
Last Thursday saw a historic vote abroad: the United Kingdom (UK) voted to leave the 28 country European Union (EU). In effect, the British just had their “Tea Party” event. A few days before the vote, I wrote about the possibility of this happening. Although there was certainly passion on both sides – the ‘stay’ […]
Risk Aversion Grows as “Brexit” is a Distinct Possibility
While most of our industry focuses on the new Department of Labor (DOL) rules and how this would affect annuity sales in general over the next few years, there’s an event happening next week that could upset the financial markets. You’ve started to see it already. This week, highly-rated government bond yields dropped dramatically. The […]
Can the DOL Lawsuit Stop a Runaway Train?
There continues to be a flurry of articles, emails, and webinars to discuss how the recent DOL ruling affecting Fixed Index Annuities (FIAs) sold using qualified money will impact all of our lives, livelihoods and practices. And I just can’t help but think it’s all becoming a noisy, inbox-filling waste of time. I get three […]
