Labor Department Secretary Tom Perez said Thursday the agency is still reviewing the final draft of the proposed fiduciary rule for retirement plan advisors.
He would not predict when it would be publicly released. It is expected to come out in the next several weeks.
The rule would require advisors to put their clients’ financial interests above their own. Perez said the agency is working to make the rule enforceable.
He said the problem the proposed rule is trying to cure isn’t people with malice in their hearts but “misaligned incentives that put advisors’ economic interests above their clients’.”
Perez called the fiduciary standard part of the cornerstone of the DOL’s effort to protect Americans’ retirement security, which is especially important with an aging population and the decline of defined benefit plans.
His comments came during and after a subcommittee hearing for the Senate Appropriations Committee on the department’s funding for fiscal 2017, beginning October 1.
The subcommittee’s chair, Sen. Roy Blunt, a Missouri Republican and a fiduciary rule opponent, said the subcommittee’s version of the DOL budget won’t include a prohibition against the agency for spending money to enforce the rule.
However, he said a bar could appear in the full Appropriations Committee or the full Senate versions.
Late last fall, Republicans mounted an effort to put a restriction in the DOL funding bill for 2016, but failed.