I was recently asked by a reporter if the new fiduciary regulation was “needed.” The question caught me a bit off guard, because having been in “figure out how to deal with this” mode for most of the past year, I had long since moved past “why” and “if” to “when” and “how.”
I was reminded of our last home purchase – which we bought in a bit of a rush. Oh, it wasn’t like we didn’t know we were moving – but our ability to actually hone in on a new home was hindered by the fact that our current home had to sell first. And, as is often the case in such things (or has been for us), we had gone a long time with nary an offer, much less a viable one.
Once that offer came, of course, we had to move quickly (literally). And so, the planning that we had done mentally in anticipation of that day was thrust into overdrive. Ultimately we settled on a house that wasn’t the best we had seen, but it was the best available at the time (within the price and commuting distance restraints we placed upon it). At the time we moved in, I took some comfort from the fact that its prior residents had lived there more than a quarter century. More than enough time, I thought, to have fixed whatever ails might have arisen there.
It wasn’t long, however, before we realized that with that longevity in residence had come a certain complacency about the upkeep and maintenance; the even uglier things we found underneath the ugly pink carpet, the doors that we hadn’t opened during the inspection that fell off the hinges, the garage door opener that dropped out of the ceiling after a dozen uses…. I was later to tell folks that we spent the next several years (and no small amount of money) doing the 25 years of maintenance that the former residents had simply chosen to live without.
Was Fiduciary Regulation Needed?
So, with that experience in mind, I returned to the reporter’s question… was the new fiduciary regulation “needed”.
After a quick pause, I responded that, more than 40 years on, it certainly bore consideration. After all, the retirement savings world has changed a lot over the past generation, and if DB plans were never quite as ubiquitous as some remember them, defined contribution plans, and IRAs – which now have more assets than the DC plans which spawned many of them – increasingly are. It’s not just those individual retirement savers, either – the plan sponsor fiduciaries that play such an integral role in critical areas like plan design and outcomes measurement need all the help they can get in these increasingly complex areas.
At some point you can’t be in this business and not know that, as in all human endeavors, there are bad actors. Generally speaking, and thankfully, they are the minority. But they are out there, and every retirement plan advisor I have ever spoken with can cite examples, frequently multiple ones, of situations they have encountered, and not always been able to fix. You can’t credibly argue there aren’t problems – only whether this particular solution is well suited to, and cost effective for, the task for which it has been presented.
And yet, while all that was known and acknowledged, like the family having grown accustomed to the walls that surround our existence, there were no clarion calls for change, certainly not of the scope and scale contemplated by the Labor Department’s fiduciary regulation.
Not that I ever bought the widely cited $17 billion figure that proponents of the regulation said (and continue to say) it was costing American savers. Nobody knows the exact figure, of course (though I’m pretty sure you won’t be close if your assumptions are predicated on the notion that all active management choices are at an advisor's direction, and only look at IRAs, even if you do cut that result in half). But let’s say it was exaggerated by a factor of two – would a $9 billion “rip-off” have been enough to warrant redress? What if it were a “mere” $1 billion?
But is the cure “proportionate” to the ills it purports to address? I’m pretty sure it will cost more than the current projections suggest – that’s the nature of such things. However, I’ve been in this business too long not to appreciate the benefits that ERISA’s oversight can bring, and those may well be understated. That said, it would be naïve to assume that flat fees (or flat rates) are necessarily cheaper in every situation. Or that the advice that comes with those pay structures is inherently “better.” But a shift in those directions will remove what is surely at least a temptation for some. And if fewer individuals take advice at those rates, and on those conditions – well, they will almost certainly do so with a greater appreciation for what such insight is worth, even if they are unwilling to pay for it.
Though it is less than a week old, there’s a pretty consistent sense that the final regulation is more workable than its predecessor. Indeed, many would argue, considerably so. Make no mistake, the Labor Department may not have acquiesced in every comment or suggestion made over the past year, but they were clearly taking notes.
That does not, however, mean that it doesn’t still have “bugs” that have to be worked out, provisions that need to be refined, definitions that need to be clarified. We may have known this was coming, but this new fiduciary “home” has only just come on the market.
It’s not unusual for “cures” to be worse than the disease – or to at least be more costly. The fiduciary regulation may yet turn out to have unintended consequences (count on it) – or, hard as it may be to imagine right now, we may look back in a couple of years and wonder at how quickly we adjusted.
Regardless, the waiting is over. The work begins.
