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Don’t Hold Your Breath for the SEC Fiduciary Rule

Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Mary Jo White has reiterated that her agency’s fiduciary rule is coming, but “not any time soon.” White made her remarks on Sept. 27 at the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association’s capital markets conference annual meeting in Washington, D.C.

White told attendees that she considers a fiduciary rule “enormously important,” reports FinancialPlanning, but also stressed that won’t change her agency’s timing. She told attendees that the fact that the SEC is taking its time is attributable to several factors, such as the extraordinary complexity of the process of arriving at such a rule, and the fact that two out of five commission seats remain open. Not only that, the remaining commissioners do not see eye to eye on the matter.

White also said she expects the SEC’s fiduciary rule to differ in some ways from that of the Department of Labor (DOL). And while she said that the SEC and DOL would coordinate their rules, she also stressed that they are different agencies and that hers does not enforce DOL rules.

White expects that the DOL rule will add to the proliferation of the SEC’s workload. She said that in the last two years, 2,000 new advisers have registered with the SEC and that the DOL rule will heighten that proliferation. And she noted that the SEC’s resources are insufficient to provide oversight of advisers.