"The rule was meant to help people plan for and save for retirement and if this [research] potentially walks that back it has negative connotations for the people it was meant to help,” Williams said.
Strunk said one of the ways to influence the administration from outside is to have industries like IRI and others really push members of Congress to, in turn, push the White House. “President Biden is a creature of the Senate, a long-time member of Congress. He understands the role of Congress as Trump and Obama didn’t,” he said.
“So, using our partners and friends and highlighting all of the IRI’s findings is really the way to push the administration to delay this or not do it all,” Strunk added.
With an already busy legislative calendar, “the White House is working to try to stack up wins ahead of mid-terms,” Williams added. “I don’t think [this rule] ranks up there as something that will be on the docket immediately."
IRI is also arguing that the DOL and the Biden administration should allow new investment advice regulations put in place since 2016, including Regulation Best Interest, to take hold before piling on with another new rule.
“We haven’t been sitting idle at IRI,” Richman said. “We’ve been out there talking to members of Congress to express our opinion that any new DOL rulemaking in this space we think is really premature. The new framework that’s in pace has only been in effect from anywhere from a couple of months to just a couple years ... and we think that there needs to be time given to let the framework operate in the real world to see what its impact is to determine whether or not it’s working or not and whether there are deficiencies that need to be addressed or not."