“You’re going to see a reduction in regulation all around, but we have to ask how high the rule is going to be within the list of things that Trump and Congress have to deal with,” Duran says. “It’s hard to imagine that he’s going to get to the DOL before it’s implemented, I think his No. 1 line of attack is going to be the Affordable Care Act.”
Even if the Trump administration sets its site on the DOL rule, it may not be able to prevent its enforcement. The DOL’s rulemaking stems from guidance within the Dodd-Frank Act, a sweeping piece of financial legislation that would be difficult to repeal.
Skip Schweiss, director of advisor advocacy for TD Ameritrade Institutional and generally a supporter of the DOL’s rulemaking, is confident that the regulation will stand under the next administration.
“What people are missing about this rule is that it is final – this is not a work in progress,” Schweiss says. “The house has been built, it’s just waiting for us all to move into it. To undo the rule would be to say that we all need to tear down the house, to reverse and somehow undo a final rule. That would take an entirely new rulemaking process.”
Schweiss says that advisors and broker-dealers should continue their preparations for the rule.
Matt McGrew, chief operating officer of USA Financial, which operates a dually registered broker-dealer and RIA, says that his company will implement compliance processes for the rule.
“This doesn’t really change my outlook,” McGrew says. “It’s going to be an interesting environment going forward, but I don’t think that the DOL rule is going to change.”