The Labor Department just approved a rule that requires advisors to adopt a fiduciary standard when providing advice about retirement funds.
The Department of Labor recently instituted regulations that should stop many of these shenanigans by requiring advisors giving retirement advice to put their clients' interests ahead of their own.
Most recently, the topic has come up in the context of the DOL's new fiduciary rule, which requires advisors to act in their clients' best interests when it comes to retirement accounts--and to disclose potential conflicts related to collecting commissions and recommending proprietary products.
Such approaches might require having advisors on the ground who monitor activities and are on call to help beneficiaries when needed.
The agency is considering whether to require investment advisors to third-party custodians and auditors certified to comply with stricter accounting standards under Sarbanes Oxley laws.
But because the law does not require financial advisors to do so, far too many do not act fairly.
Every president (and presidential candidate) should simply require key advisors and officials to sign a binding contract of confidentiality as a condition of employment.
Obama tried to revamp the 401(k) system in 2015 by creating a rule that would require all advisors to retirement plans to become the ERISA 3 38) fiduciaries that aren't allowed to steal your money.
The new rules require the advisors who sell IRAs or help you roll over your 401(k) balance into an IRA when you leave a job to act as fiduciaries.
The decision in Tibble vs. Edison International comes on the heels of a proposal by the Labor Department that would require investment advisors to put clients' interests first across a broad swath of retirement-related transactions, particularly those involving individual retirement accounts, which differ from 401 k)s in that the personal accounts don't involve employers.
