Newark, New Jersey.
New Jersey's newly proposed uniform fiduciary plan "far exceeds" the Securities and Exchange Commission's Regulation Best Interest as well as the Labor Department's now defunct fiduciary rule, according to a recent analysis by Groom Law Group.
"New Jersey believes that a uniform standard of care is necessary for the provision of securities recommendations — and that such standard must be a fiduciary one," the attorneys write in their Groom Benefits Brief.
The "Fiduciary Duty of Broker-Dealers, Agents, Investment Advisers, and Investment Adviser Representatives" proposal:
- includes an expansive definition of what constitutes a "recommendation";
- imposes a uniform fiduciary duty on brokers and advisors; and
- creates presumptive breaches if brokers and advisors do not recommend the best reasonably available option and fee arrangement.
Unlike Maryland, whose fiduciary legislation was torpedoed by the state's Senate Finance Committee on April 4, New Jersey "doesn't need votes, per se, just to follow their administrative law in promulgating a regulation and hoping it stands up in court," George Michael Gerstein, co-chair of Stradley Ronon's fiduciary governance group, told ThinkAdvisor in a recent interview.
The New Jersey Bureau of Securities followed through on its plan to create a uniform fiduciary standard for broker-dealers and investment advisors on April 15. The New Jersey plan, as Gerstein noted, "comes nearly three months to the day after Nevada proposed a similar fiduciary regulation." New Jersey will take comments on its plan until June 14.
Like New Jersey's proposal, the SEC's proposed Reg BI would impose a care obligation upon broker-dealers and reps when providing recommendations, according to the Groom attorneys.
"This duty would include a best-interest standard that requires knowledge of the customer's risk profile characteristics," the Groom attorneys state.
However, unlike the New Jersey plan, the proposed Reg BI "does not apply a fiduciary standard to broker-dealer representatives. The SEC obligation is a best-interest obligation that does not allow the representative to place his or her interests ahead of the customer's interest," Groom states.
"Under this standard, some, but not all, duty of loyalty type conflicts can be mitigated through proper disclosure to the customer under the SEC's proposal," the attorneys write.
The proposed New Jersey regulation "explicitly states that there is no presumption the duty of loyalty is met through disclosure."
Like Labor's expansive rulemaking, New Jersey's plan recommends that the fiduciary duty apply to recommendations regarding the transfer of assets to or opening of an account.
