Equitable Sees Changes in DOL's Fiduciary Rule Approach

What You Need to Know

The Insured Retirement Institute and Finseca see the proposal as unnecessary.
The National Association of Insurance Commissioners also opposes the new regulations.
Equitable noted a lack of private right of action in the updated language.

Annuity market players are still trying to determine how the 494 pages of new U.S. Labor Department fiduciary rule regulation drafts compare with what the department put out in 2016.

Nick Lane, the president of Equitable, said his company sees important differences between the new proposal and the old, ill-fated effort.

“For Equitable, we see no material impact, given the investments we’ve made and the changing landscape,” he said.

Many representatives from insurance industry, regulator and consumer groups have said that they think the new proposal and the previous effort look similar.

What it means: How players end up seeing the new proposal will affect whether independent annuity agents and brokers helping clients roll over retirement account assets will have to give clients detailed descriptions of their initial and renewal commissions.

The proposals: The Labor Department has posted four draft regulations that would affect retirement savers who roll assets from a 401(k) plan.

The longest would define the term “investment advice fiduciary.”

A second would update Prohibited Transaction Exemption 84-24, which sets the rules for independent agents and brokers who want to act as fiduciaries and also earn sales commissions, and a third would update PTE 2020-02, which affects investment advisors who are supervised by insurers, banks, broker-dealers, RIAs or other financial institutions.

A fourth would update several other prohibited transaction exemptions.

Although the Labor Department would let independent producers and investment advisors collect commissions, producers and advisors who sold “non-security annuities” and, possibly, some other non-security insurance products to retirement savers would be subject to the DOL fiduciary rule framework.

In 2016, during the administration of former President Barack Obama, the department defined investment advice fiduciary in an earlier regulation. Opponents challenged the regulation in court. The Trump administration declined to defend it, and it died.

The department revived the investment fiduciary definition project after Joe Biden became president.

The groups: Chuck DiVencenzo, president of the National Association for Fixed Annuities, is especially cautious about weighing in.

“We’re still unpacking all the nuance and coordination with the regulation and PTEs,” he said.

Finseca CEO Marc Cadin, Insured Retirement Institute CEO Wayne Chopus, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners and Howard Bard, principal deputy general counsel at the American Council of Life Insurers, are confident that their groups will oppose the proposal.

“It has the same look and feel as the 2016 proposal,” Bard said. “No matter what the preamble says, the rule itself will have the same impact as the previous effort: It would make financial guidance inaccessible for many retirement savers, especially moderate-income savers.”

Chopus noted that the Securities and Exchange Commission and the NAIC responded to the earlier Labor Department effort by developing a new regulatory framework.