Expanding the "fiduciary standard" in Congress

[Wisconsin Beth]

All this hyped-up, martial verbiage involves an ongoing attempt by the Department of Labor and the Obama administration to expand something known as the fiduciary standard, the legal requirement that financial advisers and brokers put your best interests ahead of their own, to cover retirement accounts.

The United States, it is generally agreed, is on the verge of a retirement crisis. According to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, a majority of households headed by someone aged 59 or younger are in danger of suffering from falling living standards in retirement. The slow phase-out of private-sector pensions and their replacement by such do-it yourself vehicles as 401(k)s and individual retirement accounts did not turn us into a nation of economic winners as promised but instead left all too many Americans woefully financially unprepared for the end of their working lives.

Yet according to a study released earlier this year by the White House Council of Economic Advisers, conflicted retirement advice is costing us $17 billion annually. We need every penny we can get, and the financial services industry is siphoning them off. How could that happen?

This gets technical, so bare with me for a few paragraphs while I explain.


www.slate.com/articles/business/the_bills/2015/06/fiduciary_standard_for_retirement_accounts_republicans_don_t_want_to_expand.html

Mods, feel free to move as needed. 

[Deleted]

So true.

Having to meet a higher standard MIGHT make these investment brokers worth their $500K - $1M annual income/bonus. The current schemes make no sense to me at all. They churn investments to make their money, so no incentive to necessarily do the right thing, unless the bonuses are tied to client results (instead of kickback results).

Falling standard in retirement? I don't think I need anywhere near my former annual earnings to support retirement lifestyle, so yeah, my lifestyle better reduce 

[Opti]

I'll read this later, but conceptually the idea is sound.

the legal requirement that financial advisers and brokers put your best interests ahead of their own, to cover retirement accounts.

If this succeeds its time to move onto corporate governance and corporate officers, MHO. Play nice in the sandbox on your own, or we the people might be modifying the sandbox.   (Again, though, I'll celebrate after reading the actual law. The bankruptcy law IMO, firmly came down in the plus column for CC industry, even though they changed & modified their preferred business standards.)