On Monday the White House released a report on The Effects of Conflicted Investment Advise on Retirement Savings which highlights the unique constraints of many retirement investors.  The current "suitable" investment advise standard leaves room for financial service provides to channel retirement investors into investments with higher fees paid by the investor but higher commissions earned by the professional.  Higher fees paid on investments can reduce the return on savings an average of 12% over the life of the retirement account.  In other words, paying less in fees could mean that retirement savings could last an average of an additional 5 years.  This has major implications for individual financial stability as well as our national retirement policy, which is increasingly dependent upon self-directed retirement savings in the form of 401(k)s and IRAs.

To reduce the conflict of interest and lessen the likelihood that retirement investors will "select" higher-fee investment vehicles based on the self-interested advise of financial services providers, the White House is asking the Department of Labor to impose a fiduciary duty standard requiring the advise provided to be consistent with the best interests of the investor.  This is such an intuitive position that many investors think that financial advisers and brokers are already subject to this requirement.  The proposal would bring the legal reality and enforceable duty in line with the public perspective.  This is not to say that there won't be significant opposition from financial services providers who argue that the industry is already highly regulated.

The announcement and the focus on both retirement investors and the impact of fees on retirement savings is of particular interest to me.  I have written three law review articles on related topics.  

  • Citizen Shareholders and Modernizing the Agency Paradigm (2012) articulates the ways in which retirement investors (I call them Citizen Shareholders) are different from traditional corporate law shareholders;
  • The Retirement Revolution (2013) describes how the fundamental shift in the retirement landscape imposed additional risks onto the retirement investors; and 
  • The Outside Investor (2014) explores how the intersection of corporate law and ERISA standards leave many retirement investors exposed to additional market risks rather than intuitive guess that these investors would be more protected.

-Anne Tucker