Michael Piwowar, the acting chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, said Friday that the onset of the Trump administration has given the SEC the opportunity to reassert its authority in determining what the fiduciary standard of care should be for broker-dealers and RIAs when working with clients.
Speaking to the Mutual Fund Directors Forum Policy Conference in Washington, D.C., Piwowar, a Republican SEC commissioner, used the opportunity to criticize the Department of Labor, complaining that it had no interest in working with the SEC to make its new fiduciary rule workable.
Financial firms, he said, have told him they are spending a lot of money on lawyers to comply with the rule and finding compliance is impossible.
Piwowar argued that the DOL’s rule has nothing to do with protecting investors but instead aims to improve the ability of plaintiff lawyers to bring cases.
“It has achieved that objective,” he said.
Piwowar said he is eagerly awaiting the U.S. Senate’s confirmation of Jay Clayton, a mergers and acquisitions lawyer, as the new SEC chair. Piwowar praised Clayton’s savvy.
“He knows a lot about the securities industry,” Piwowar said.
Piwowar also said the SEC should take the lead role among the nation’s financial regulators in financial technology because it is the only regulator with a capital formation mandate.