Attacking the Department of Labor fiduciary rule and obviously relishing the opportunity to pile on, Piwowar lambasted the regulation as a very terrible, no good, political gotcha rule that came out of a left-wing think tank.
“The fiduciary rule was never about investor protection. It was about enabling trial lawyers to increase profits,” he said.
Piwowar said an initiative by former SEC Chair Mary Jo White to increase investment advisor exams by switching some broker-dealer examiners to RIA duty is working out well.
“It has allowed us to increase our oversight of the investment advisor space,” said Piwowar.
Looking at a proposal to have third parties do RIA exams, the commissioner opined he is not enamored with the idea since it would add costs to the SEC for the creation of a unit to monitor the third-party examiners as well as decreasing costs by having them do some exams or parts of exams.
“There is no such thing as a free lunch,” said Piwowar.
In the long term, he said, the agency will have to figure out how to cope with a coming crunch from Congress and the White House by looking geographically at where most RIAs and customer assets are and considering whether the SEC regional offices are staffed appropriately to cover those concentrations.
“We are going to have to have some choices,” said Piwowar, who noted technology will be a help in deciding where to place examiners.