Senator Marshall Fights to Protect Consumer Freedoms in Letter to Department of Labor 

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Roger Marshall, M.D. led a letter to the Department of Labor (DOL)  pushing back against its recent Retirement Security Rule, “Definition of an Investment Advice Fiduciary.”

If finalized, this rule would add burdensome regulations and additional costs to financial advisors, resulting in fewer retirement investment options for Americans. Under Obama, the DOL finalized a similar rule that ultimately hurt millions of retirement accounts and set up billions in retirement savings to be lost before being struck down in courts. 

Senator Marshall’s letter advises the DOL against making this same mistake and implementing any rules that take away retirement savings from investors. 

Cosigners of Senator Marshall’s letter include Senators John Barrasso, Mike Braun, Susan Collins, John Cornyn, Joni Ernst, Chuck Grassley, Bill Hagerty, Cindy Hyde-Smith, Mike Rounds, and John Thune. 

Highlights from the letter include:

“We appreciate the Department’s desire to ensure Americans are protected as they pursue the financial means to enjoy a secure retirement, but this proposal will have theopposite effect by imposing significant costs that will limit investors’ access to the financial advice they need to secure their future.”

“In our view, the Department’s proposal is unnecessarily duplicative of existing regulatory protections and will merely create excessive regulations on an already burdened industry.”

“Designating any advisor that charges a fee as a fiduciary misunderstands the purpose of choices in the advisor market. Investors can currently choose whether to pay for financial advice through fee for service planning, assets under management fees, and/or commissions.”

“This rule does not recognize the difference between investment advisers paid fees for advice, who have long been considered fiduciaries; and brokers and insurance agents, who did not assume fiduciary status in selling products to their clients.”

“Building off of this, consumers will not only lose out on choices in the market, but some may be cut out from utilizing advisors entirely. As we saw from a similar rule in 2016, more than 10 million retirement account owners were limited or had to altogether stop working with their financial advisor, not to mention the $900 billion in savings they missed out on because of that rule.”

“At a time when the current retirement gap is at $3.68 trillion,  the last thing the Department needs to be doing is implementing rules that will take away retirement savings from our constituents.”

You may click HERE to read Senator Marshall’s full letter.