The Financial Services Roundtable, the premier trade group for the nation’s biggest banks, brokers, advisors and insurers, released a white paper Wednesday calling for steps to improve the Labor Department’s fiduciary proposal for advisors to retirement plan participants.

FSR’s suggestions were immediately labeled as a disguised attempt to kill it by the Committee for the Fiduciary Standard Chair Kathleen McBride.

“This is just another way to try to delay the DOL proposal to the point of death until President Obama is out of office," she said. "Each month of delay puts $1.7 billion in the pockets of the financial services industry.” 

A key feature of the FSR’s position paper is the suggestion that commissions be explicitly rather than implicitly permitted.

The group also knocked the DOL’s disclosure requirements as overly complex and in conflict with existing regulations.

FSR also is seeking to eliminate the proposal’s mandate that a plan participant must sign a contract before speaking to an advisor.

The group contends the DOL proposal would harm workers by preventing plans from offering model portfolios.

Instead, FSR said financial professionals should be allowed to recommend any investment product or service that would be in the best interest of a customer, and which would not provide more than reasonable compensation to the professional