The U.S. Department of Labor issued its long-awaited and highly controversial "investment advice" regulation under ERISA's fiduciary rules on April 6, 2016. The regulation is slated to begin becoming applicable in April 2017.
The recent election may have drawn into question the survival of the amended regulation.2 Now, on December 14, 2016, the House of Representative's Freedom Caucus issued a key report identifying over 200 legislative and regulatory initiatives targeted by it for elimination during the early days of the Trump administration. This development is potentially critical to the question of whether the amended fiduciary regulation will survive, as one path to its survival is that it flies under the radar long enough to make it to the April applicability date. At that point, the likelihood of ultimate survival is arguably greater. The Freedom Caucus' report indicates, at a minimum, that the regulation does not seem to be flying under the radar.
