Subject: Compliance

Reg BI: What’s Going On and What May Happen Next?

SEC Chair Gary Gensler has not publicly stated much regarding Reg BI since Spring of this year. Generally, though, the messaging from SEC leadership regarding the Division of Examinations and the Division of Enforcement continues to be aggressive. In the retail investor area, for example, in late August Chair Gensler appointed Barbara Roper, the Director of Investor Protection for the Consumer Federation of America, as a Senior Advisor to the Chair. Turning back to Reg BI specifically, what we continue to hear out of the SEC is that Chair Gensler’s regime is going to play the Reg BI “hand that it has been dealt” aggressively.

On November 4, 2021, SEC Commissioner and former Acting Chair Allison Herren Lee gave a speech at ACLI’s CLE 2021 Conference on Life Insurance Products entitled “A Call to Action: Recommendations for Complying with Reg BI.” Commissioner Herren Lee covered several Reg BI topics, including what constitutes a recommendation and mitigation. Regarding recommendations, she noted that the Commission’s supplemental materials accompanying Reg BI speak of a “call to action” that may be viewed as influencing an investor to invest in or trade a particular security being enough to constitute a recommendation. On this topic, she emphasized the importance of the account opening process. Commissioner Herren Lee also addressed mitigation, in particular to manage the risk of an associated person putting their interests ahead of their customers, perhaps due to limitations in the firm’s products menu.

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New York Insurance Regulation 187 Found Unconstitutional: Now What? A Faegre Drinker Podcast

On April 29, 2021, the State of New York Supreme Court Appellate Division in the Third Judicial Department issued an Opinion and Order finding that the amendment to New York Insurance Regulation 187 was unconstitutionally vague. In this Faegre Drinker podcast, a cross-disciplinary team of our attorneys discusses the preliminary implications of this important decision.

The SEC’s CCO Guidance Month

In an unprecedented move, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) released guidance on several platforms in a 30-day period in 2020 regarding certain views on the important role and potential liability risks of chief compliance officers (CCOs). The SEC’s focus on the role of compliance is not new but sometimes the SEC’s support for compliance has not appeared to extend beyond the SEC’s Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations (OCIE). In this article, we analyze the guidance provided by each source.
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The Final Reg BI Package: What to Know and What’s Next

To nobody’s great surprise, on June 5, the SEC approved the “Reg BI Package,” which includes a series of new standards governing the fiduciary responsibilities of broker-dealers and investment advisers. The approved items consisted of the Regulation Best Interest – Standard of Conduct for Broker-Dealers; Form CRS Relationship Summary; Standard of Conduct for Investment Advisers; and Interpretation of “Solely Incidental,” all of which seem likely to have considerable impact on the industry going forward.

Drinker Biddle’s Best Interest Compliance Team issued an alert summarizing the June 5th meeting, certain statements made by the commissioners, and examining the potential effects of the new standards.

Read the full client alert.

Fiduciary Status for the Unwary

If you thought that avoiding fiduciary status would be a slam-dunk after the “new” DOL fiduciary advice rule was vacated, think again. The DOL’s old fiduciary regulation is back and it casts an unexpectedly wide net.

Let’s start with the background. The reinstated fiduciary definition says that a broker-dealer and its advisor (a “broker”) are fiduciaries to a plan if a functional five-part test is satisfied: (1) the broker provides advice about investments for a fee or other compensation, (2) on a regular basis, (3) under a mutual understanding, (4) that the advice will form a primary basis for the plan’s decisions, and (5) that the advice is individualized based upon the plan’s particular needs. For this purpose, a “plan” includes not only an ERISA plan, but also an IRA. (In the context of IRAs, being a fiduciary under the five-part test does not itself implicate a standard of care, but does apply to the applicability of certain prohibited transactions.)

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