Does anybody want to sound off on what’s happening in Washington? The fiduciary rule, litigation, contribution limit cuts? Anybody at all?
Stephen Moylan actually found a few. The president of The New England Wealth & Retirement Conference will field an all-star panel of experts in a show highlight on Friday morning.
“Like everybody else, I’m just going to listen to what Marcia has to say,” panelist Jamie Worrell, founder and managing director of the Northeast region for Strategic Retirement Partners, joked about fellow pundit Marcia Wagner, president of Wagner Law Group.
Together with Heath Miller of Shepherd Kaplan, the three will (attempt) to explain the Trump Administration and provide a Washington D.C. Update, specifically as it relates to “rules, regulations and real-world issues facing Advisors.
“There are a lot of retirement plan-related class action lawsuits popping up, and the legal and regulatory environment continues to be a landmine, more now than ever,” Worrell explained. “We will be looking at the administration’s impact on advisors, as well as any legal threats that are out there.”
“Marcia and Heath will probably give an overview of some of the key lawsuits we’ve seen,” he added. “We are going to keep it high-level enough so that the audience can easily digest and understand the information, and immediately put it to use to grow their practice.”
With the Fiduciary Rule as a backdrop, he noted, they’ll also consider how that affect advisors, and how it might be different depending on whether the advisor is working with an IRA or an employer-sponsored retirement plan.
“How do advisors proceed between now, and when the full scope of the [regulations] implemented?” Worrell concluded. “As was stated in the ERISA lawsuit of Donovan v. Cunningham: ‘A pure heart and an empty head are not enough.’ Is it enough to try to comply in good faith, or do you have to do more than make a good faith effort to comply? It should be a lively discussion with some key takeaways.”
With more than 20 years serving financial markets, John Sullivan is the former editor-in-chief of Investment Advisor magazine and retirement editor of ThinkAdvisor.com. Sullivan is also the former editor of Boomer Market Advisor and Bank Advisor magazines, and has a background in the insurance and investment industries in addition to his journalism roots.
