The Dow Jones Industrial Average's climb to record levels is not likely to move many financial advisors back into Securities and Exchange Commission oversight, North American Securities Administrators Association President Heath Abshure said Tuesday.

The head of the state securities regulators group said few advisors were hovering near the $100 million assets-under-management threshold for federal regulation when the Dodd-Frank act rise from $25 million kicked in last summer. Most of the firms migrating since the switch had AUMs from $26 million to $75 million.

An advisory firm’s assets under management at the end of its fiscal year determines whether it should register with the SEC or a state. However, there is a 180-day buffer afterwards that a firm can use in case its AUM fluctuates over or below the SEC $100 million threshold. The SEC also allows state-registered firms to stay state registered if their assets rise as high as $110 million. Likewise, a firm can stay federally registered if its assets fall to $90 million.

“I really don’t anticipate movement between the federal and state to be a problem,” Abshure said.

Abshure, who also serves as Arkansas securities commissioner, said states generally saw fewer firms than expected switch to state regulation. In Arkansas, for example, he predicted 40 firms would switch but the actual number was in the high 20s.

Abshure spoke during NASAA's unveiling of its 2013 legislative agenda in Washington, D.C.

While Finra has said it is backing off from its 2012 effort to get Congress to give it the power to regulate registered investments advisors, Abshure said it is “naïve” to think the group won’t be working behind the scenes to add RIAs to its oversight of broker-dealers.

On its legislative wish list, NASAA is calling for the first time for Congress to allow state regulators to bar mandatory pre-dispute arbitration clauses in contracts between state-registered investment advisors and their clients.

“Arbitration should not be the sole forum available for aggrieved investors,” Abshure said.

Dodd-Frank allows the SEC to ban mandatory arbitration by federally registered advisors.

For the second year, NASAA is urging Congress to let the SEC collect user fees from RIAs it examines, calling the move the most effective and efficient way of improving oversight because it would let the agency conduct more exams annually.

A bill last year sponsored by California's Maxine Waters, now the lead Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, to give the SEC the authority went nowhere.

If she introduces it again, the Republican-controlled committee is likely to doom it to the same fate.

But sometimes legislation offered repeatedly over several years does become law, such as the credit card act expanding consumer protection for that form of debt.

One Congressional session’s losing idea can become the next’s winner as party majorities switch and backburner issues become prominent.