DOL Issues Long Awaited Final Fiduciary Rule

Today, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) issued the long awaited final fiduciary rule. The final fiduciary rule makes sweeping changes to the laws governing retirement advice and conflicts of interest in retirement savings. Here are the final fiduciary rule and related fact sheet.

The DOL first proposed changes to the fiduciary rule in 2010 and then reproposed the fiduciary rule last April. Since the fiduciary rule was first proposed, the DOL has received extensive feedback from industry, advocates, Congress, federal and state regulators and others. The final rule released today reflects streamlined rules and exemptions, including several changes to simplify the “best interests contracts exemption” and certain relief for non-traded REITs and annuities. The DOL’s chart showing the changes from its 2015 conflicts of interest proposal to the final rule may be found here.

The final fiduciary rule will become effective in April 2017. However, compliance with the “best interest contract exemption” and “principal transactions exemption” will be phased in from April 2017 to January 1, 2018 to give financial institutions and advisors more time to comply with the requirements for these exemptions.

We will follow up with a more detailed summary of the final fiduciary rule. We will be hosting a seminar on the final rule later this spring and will circulate details on the seminar in the near future.

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