“Anything Congress can do to help us assist senior clients who are the victim of fraud is a move in the right direction,” said Edward J. Snyder, co-found of Oaktree Financial Advisors in Carmel, Ind.
“Anything that speeds up the process is a good thing, because some times seniors don’t have a long time,” said Snyder, who reported a case of financial abuse against a senior client to his broker-dealer in 2017. The broker-dealer froze the client’s account and reported the case to state regulators and protective services.
The American Council of Life Insurers (ACLI) has also thrown its weight behind the legislation. “By encouraging the reporting of suspected fraud, the Senior Safe Act improves the ability of companies to work with regulators to protect seniors from losing their retirement savings,” ACLI President and CEO Governor Dirk Kempthorne said.
Granting immunity to those who report suspected fraud to regulators “is extremely beneficial public policy” because it improves the ability of companies to work with regulators to protect seniors from losing their retirement savings, Kempthorne said. “It facilitates improved communication between insurance producers, life insurance companies and regulators in the event of suspected financial exploitation of senior citizens,” he said.
The National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors (NAIFA) has also been working with lawmakers in support of the bill. “The Senior Safe Act provides much needed protection for older investors and will allow advisors to better protect their clients’ interests,” President Keith Gillies said. “NAIFA worked hard with lawmakers to craft legislation that encourages advisors to protect their senior clients and give them mechanisms for doing so while shielding advisors who act in good faith and with reasonable care from liability.”
The financial services reform package is expected to come before the full House for a vote Tuesday, May 22.
Beyond ratifying the Senior Safe Act, the bill would ease many Dodd-Frank Act rules for small, regional and large banks. Some of the changes are designed to increase mortgage availability by relaxing underwriting standards. For the first time, credit reporting companies such as Equifax, Experian and TransUnion will be required to provide free credit freezes to all consumers who believe they’ve been hacked—and free crediting monitoring tools to active-duty military. The new requirements are fallout from the Equifax cyber attack that compromised the personal data of 148 million customers.
In exchange, members of the military will be required to waive their right to sue credit reporting agencies if something goes awry with monitoring. Another trade off for consumers in the bill: credit reporting agencies will soon be able to market an even deeper dive into Americans’ personal data in the form of a new credit scoring system they hope will become a requirement for home borrowers and mortgage lenders.