Cristina Martin Firvida, AARP director of financial security and consumer affairs, said investors who attended the first SEC roundtable in Miami had similar concerns.
“One investor who attended is an editor and is working with detailed documents day in and day out. And she said, ‘I don’t find forms useful and I can’t understand the difference between the standards,’” Martin Firvida said. “She was nice about it, but definitely said the forms need editing.”
Another AARP member who volunteered to attend the Miami roundtable has a legal background. “He said, ‘I have trouble discerning the differences [between brokers and advisors] and what you’re trying to tell me.’ We are very curious as to how these roundtables go,” Martin Firvida said. “We’re happy that the SEC is asking for public feedback. We think that’s good, but the retail investors who’d be recipients of these forms and glean info from them are just having a hard time figuring out what they’re trying to get from them,” she said.
The AARP is part of a consortium of 24 state regulators, financial planning and consumer groups that has asked the SEC to delay the August 7 deadline for commenting on the sales conduct proposals for 90 days so that the SEC can conduct expert testing and make results public.
“We’ve requested an extension and we continue to look every day for a response on that,” Martin Firvida. “But our expectation at this time is that we will file comments on the 7th. I don’t have any concrete info on how the SEC is testing the form. I have no particular insight into what the results would look like.”
The remaining two SEC investor roundtables are scheduled for Philadelphia on July 17 and in Denver on July 25.