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Perez Says DOL Will Move Forward with Fiduciary Rule

Responding to a bipartisan (though primarily Republican) letter from more than a dozen members of the U.S. House of Representatives, Labor Secretary Thomas Perez says his agency will “move forward towards issuing a Final Rule” on the agency’s “conflict of interest” proposal.

In a letter addressed to Rep. Ann Wagner (R-Mo.), Perez restated the economic justifications contained in the Department of Labor’s (DOL) RIA, noting that since the publication of the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM), the DOL has “met over fifty times with the financial services industry and other organizations” and touting his personal participation in many meetings with stakeholders, claiming that those meetings “…have certainly shaped our thinking.”

Perez noted that the DOL has received more than 330,000 comments from a variety of stakeholders, including 328,040 individual petition comments from members of the public “as well as comments from Members of Congress, the financial services industry, consumer advocates and small businesses.”

He went on to note the “…high level of interest and contribution to the process,” saying it was “indicative of a shift in attitude over the past few years” — a shift he attributed to “a recognition of the growing problem of conflicted advice, a desire to create a level playing field, agreement on the simple premise of putting the client’s best interest first, and a ‘get to yes’ attitude.”

Of course, that may not have been the motivations behind the letter to Perez, which cautioned that “the current proposal would bifurcate the industry into those who can afford an advisor and those who cannot,” and described its consequences as “…less choice for consumers and a lack of access for retail investors to sound financial advice.”

Perez closed by encouraging Wagner to “encourage your constituents — including both financial services companies and retirement savers — to submit comments to the Department in the next open comment period if they haven’t already.”