New annuity ‘best interest’ rule from NAIC
The new Model would impose a best interest standard on sales and recommendations by insurance producers of annuity products, which is a higher standard than the currently applicable suitability...
Regulations/Legal
The SECURE Act Set To Pass (Finally)
'This is an early Christmas present,' said Melissa Kahn, managing director of the Defined Contribution team at State Street Global Advisors (SSgA), in an interview yesterday.
SECURE Act still stuck in Washington gridlock
With the impeachment hearings and the looming 2020 election taking up much of legislators' bandwidth, the SECURE Act continues to be going nowhere fast in the Senate.
Scalia will help draft new fiduciary rule (after helping kill the old one)
'Mr. Scalia first defended the brokerage and insurance industry’s right to engage in conflicts of interest that harm retirement savers. Now, he seems eager to engage in his own...
New safe harbor for electronic retirement plan disclosures
Retirement plan sponsors can now satisfy disclosure requirements by making the information available on a website, Wagner Law Firm experts explain. Photo: Marcia Wagner.
Federal judge dismisses adviser suit against ONL
The judge rejected the claim that Ohio National Life was obligated by its distribution contract with LPL to keep paying trail commissions on the sale of variable annuities to...
TD Ameritrade to sell its first indexed annuity, a Pacific Life contract
'The settlements are part of an ongoing, industry-wide investigation into immediate annuity replacement practices in the state,' regulators said.
Subscription-based planners sue SEC over Reg BI
Like eight state attorney generals, the subscription-based XY Planning Network has filed a federal lawsuit against the SEC in New York. XYPN was co-founded by celebrity adviser Michael Kitces...
Why Eight States Are Suing Over ‘Reg BI’
'Dually registered' advisers can switch hats between the broker/commission model and the adviser/AUM model as needed, to the confusion and expense of investors. Eight state attorneys general say the...
House MEP bill could fuel pension risk transfer deals
According to a CBO estimate, HR397 calls for loans and grants to insolvent or troubled multiemployer pensions totaling almost $49 billion between 2019 and 2024 and almost $68 billion...
SEC Sides with the Brokers
Although there will be no higher standard of conduct for advice on tax-deferred retirement accounts—the essence of the Obama DOL fiduciary rule—the new 'Regulation Best Interest' will apply to...
Do Fiduciary Rules Work, or Do They Backfire?
'We found that broker-dealer representatives in states with common law fiduciary duties sold cheaper and better products and sell fewer variable annuities overall,' said Manisha Padi, one of the...
Flash: House passes major retirement bill
The Secure Act (H.R. 1994), which provides for "open multiple employer plans" and reduced liability for employers who want to add annuities to their retirement plans, passed by a...
Deregulating Retirement
Retirement bills close to passage in the House and Senate remove barriers to commerce in the 401(k) business but could also weaken safeguards that have been in place for...
The Case for Collaboration among State-Sponsored Savings Plans
The authors of this article, Angela M. Antonelli, director of the Georgetown University Center for Retirement Initiatives (pictured), J. Mark Iwry, a Brookings Institution fellow, and David C. John,...
JPMorgan Chase to pay $135 to settle SEC charges
'With these charges against JPMorgan, the SEC has now held all four depositary banks accountable for their fraudulent issuances of ADRs into an unsuspecting market,' said Sanjay Wadhwa, Senior...
New Jersey to establish auto-enrolled IRA for workers without plans
The Garden States joins two other 'blue states,' California and Oregon, in sponsoring a portable workplace savings plan for workers without access to a plan. The IRAs will offer...
‘Auto-Portability’ Gets Closer to Reality
After five years of pitching their idea for automatically moving assets from one 401(k) plan to the next when a worker changes jobs, Retirement Clearinghouse this week received the...
Ohio National Sued for Compensation Breach
So far in November, three variable annuity sellers, including Commonwealth Financial, have filed federal class action lawsuits against Ohio National Life, which this fall left the annuity business and...
SEC fines Citibank $38m for mishandling ADRs
Citibank improperly pre-released ADRs to brokers in thousands of transactions, the SEC found, when neither the broker nor its customers had enough foreign shares. This led to inappropriate short selling...
