ERISA attorney Marcia Wagner sees three reasons why the "tortured" Department of Labor fiduciary rule will prevail, noting the importance of the rule to the nation's private pension system.
The Trump administration being the third one to look at the rule — behind the administrations of Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush (yes, at the time it was called the Investment Advice Rule) — "shows you how incredibly important the private pension system, broadly defined, is to our safety net of this country," Wagner said Tuesday at the Financial Planning Association's annual lobbying day in Washington.
"Appropriate oversight of fiduciary activity is necessary to protect retail investors who rely on pension and IRA assets for their security in old age … without due protections – and we can debate if the fiduciary rule goes too far or far enough – the U.S. can find itself in the unenviable position of countries where adequate protections are nonexistent, and people are invariably harmed."
