Clayton said he believed the new standards improve investor protections while preserving investors ability to choose between a broker or advisor. He also refuted many of the criticisms of the as "misguided."
He made the following rebuttals:
• “You may hear that Regulation Best Interest does not truly enhance the broker-dealer standard of conduct beyond existing suitability obligations, that it can be satisfied by disclosure alone, or that we are doing a disservice to investors by calling it a 'best-interest' standard. This is simply not true. ... The rule goes significantly beyond existing broker-dealer obligations. To be clear, Regulation Best Interest cannot be satisfied through disclosure alone."
• “You may hear that our relationship summary [form] will confuse retail investors, will not accomplish its goals, or should have been subject to further testing. This criticism misses the point of how much an improvement the relationship summary will be for retail investors over existing disclosures. No existing disclosures provide the level of transparency and comparability that the relationship summary will provide. The criticism also ignores the extensive amount of investor testing and other information our staff considered in developing the final recommendation."
• “Finally, you may hear that our fiduciary interpretation weakens the existing fiduciary duty that applies to investment advisors. Also not true. The interpretation reflects how the commission and its staff have applied and enforced the law in this area, and inspected for compliance, for decades.”