While the future of the Department of Labor’s fiduciary rule-making remains in doubt, new best-interest standards are being applied on advisors from several different angles.

In June, Nevada fast-tracked Senate Bill 383, which applies a fiduciary standard to all broker-dealers, sales representatives, investment advisors and advisor representatives.

“As more attention is being brought to this issue and states have seen the DOL bogged down, they’re taking matters into their own hands,” says Scott MacKillop, CEO of Denver-based First Ascent Asset Management. “In concept, that’s a good thing, but I’m concerned that we may end up with 50 different fiduciary standards to navigate.”

Nevada’s law requires that advisors undergo a fact-finding and discovery process each time a client is on-boarded, and on an ongoing basis. When a recommendation is rendered, advisors will have to disclose any potential gain that they may receive if their advice is followed.

Like the DOL rule, Nevada’s law is enforced through the plaintiff’s bar: If a client has lost money because of an advisor’s recommendation, and the advisor may have violated his or her fiduciary duty, the client can sue for the economic loss and all costs of litigation and attorney’s fees.

“The fiduciary issue is being raised in the consciousness of the public as well as policy makers,” says Skip Schweiss, managing director of retirement plan services and advisor advocacy at TD Ameritrade Institutional. “I think we could very well see more of this.”

Nevada is just the latest state to impose a more stringent fiduciary duty than already required by federal laws like ERISA. While a handful of states have already implemented their own standards, larger states such as New York and California are considering their own laws.

Elsewhere, states with less responsive legislatures may take months or years to apply their own standard. Florida, for example, has a legislative cycle in which lawmakers meet annually for 90 days to work on bills typically drafted and proposed during the previous year.

“Florida will probably not do anything at all with the fiduciary rule and applying it to insurance care until 2019,” says Michael Zmistowski, president of the Financial Planning Association of Tampa Bay. “That’s really moving fast for this snail’s-paced process, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, either. We want it to be right and deliberate.”

Zmistowski says that legislators in Florida, to this point, are largely unaware of the debate about fiduciary regulations.

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