Pressure from Capitol Hill is forcing the Department of Labor toward reopening a just-finished 401(k) plan fee disclosure regulation.
Michael Isaac, chief compliance officer at Stadion Money Management, has warned that retirement funds using alternative investment management strategies such as tactical asset management will struggle to comply with planned rules for target-date funds.
The Financial Accounting Standards Board should require the disclosure of transaction costs for fixed trade securities in relation to fund expense rations, not just commissions paid by funds to brokers in equity trades, says one commentator on FASB’s rule proposal on transaction costs.
The Securities and Exchange Commission’s may have been criticized by the fund industry for including fund companies in the shareholder access overhaul, but the regulator stood by its reasoning in comments extrapolating on its Aug. 25 proxy rule on its Web site.
Before Andrew Donohue leaves as the country's top mutual fund regulator in November, the Securities and Exchange Commission will put out for public comment how it wants to better align the regulation of derivatives with the complex ways the industry is using them today.
The Securities and Exchange Commission has relieved money market funds of the need to designate four credit ratings agencies they would use to determine the eligibility of securities in their portfolios.
The Coalition of Mutual Fund Investors will be taking another shot this fall at persuading the Securities and Exchange Commission to require that all beneficial owners of mutual fund shares traded in the market through brokerage omnibus accounts be individually identified.
It cannot be assumed that fixed-rate securities are always safer than equities, according to JPMorgan Asset Management.
Protection against systemic risk is now a core mission of the Securities and Exchange Commission as a result of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill and that's bound to change the way mutual funds are regulated.
A proposed requirement that disclosure of asset allocation for target-date funds be placed immediately adjacent to the name of the fund is drawing criticism from Vanguard Group and in other industry quarters.
One U.S. senator is asking the Securities and Exchange Commission to consider allowing market traders to place a bid on one exchange at the same price as an offer on another exchange—a trading strategy that would work against dark pools and high frequency traders.
Auto-IRA legislation—calling for automatic enrollment of employees in direct-deposit individual retirement accounts for businesses lacking other plans—is finally surfacing on Capitol Hill.
The Securities and Exchange Commission is getting an earful from brokers that would be subject to the advisor fiduciary standard the Dodd-Frank bill asks the Commission to consider imposing.
A fundamental accounting change now in the works could send mutual fund expense ratios skyrocketing, especially for funds that do a lot of trading.
Members of the North America Securities Administrators Association's investment advisor group will sit down with Securities and Exchange Commission officials in the coming weeks to work out an orderly transition for the thousands of advisors expected to make the switch from SEC to state oversight, according to sister publication Compliance Reporter.
Rep. Niki Tsongas (D-Mass.) and 11 other House members on July 29 introduced legislation that would allow owners of defined contribution retirement accounts to borrow from them to help shore up small business firms they own.
The Securities and Exchange Commission has granted no-action relief to investment advisors enabling industry professionals to avoid having to report investments in 529 Plans.
The argument that Class A fund shares are good for investors and Class C shares are bad is being turned upside down by brokerage industry respondents to the proposed changes in regulations for distribution fees issued by the Securities and Exchange Commission last month.
The days of mutual funds touting past performance in advertisements may be numbered.
The right way to limit mutual funds’ leverage in derivatives investments is to require funds to set up “Risk-Adjusted Segregated Amounts” (“RAS Amounts”) based on the risk profiles of the derivatives a fund owns, said a task force of fund lawyers who have been studying this subject since early 2009.
The just-signed Dodd-Frank law has turned out to have a little-noticed provision that sets up mutual fund whistleblowers for a payday.
Money market funds can expect even more competition from commercial banks next year, when the new regulatory reform law will let banks pay interest on demand deposits, Joan Swirsky, partner at Stradley Ronon, predicted.
A federal district court last week held that Edison International's $3 billion 401(k) plan is liable for "substantial" damages because it failed to consider low-cost investment options for the plan, a precedent-setting decision lawyers thought might ultimately get the issue of sponsor fiduciary duty before the Supreme Court.
The Department of Labor has won in the race with Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) over who would be first to set fee disclosure policy.
The Investment Adviser Association wants the European Union to take over policing of short selling abuses in European markets.
Investment Company Institute President Paul Stevens is raising the possibility that the debt crisis could tempt Washington to want to raise revenues in ways that impact mutual funds.
Mutual fund share transactions in 2009 accounted for more sanctions imposed against brokers by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority than any other grouping of penalty causes, just as they did earlier in the decade, according to law firm Sutherland Asbill & Brennan.
The Securities and Exchange Commission will be required to conduct 18 separate studies, at least half of which will impact mutual funds, once the financial reform bill passed by Congress becomes law.
Mutual funds that use exotic, riskier derivatives would have to set aside more assets to counterbalance their trades than users of plain vanilla derivatives under a newly floated proposal, according to sister publication Derivatives Week.
Certain mutual funds could lose their exclusion from having to register as commodity pool operators if the National Futures Association has its way.
The “large trader reporting system” the Securities and Exchange Commission wants to set up would garner more industry support if the SEC removes the provision placing the reporting burden on parent companies, wrote industry groups.
The parties at issue in Jones v. Harris Associates are firing legal briefs at each other again.
Capitol Hill insiders are saying that recently planned initiatives to curtail rapidly mounting federal debt may cause Congress to reduce or restructure tax breaks and/or participation levels for 401(k) plans.
The Securities and Exchange Commission lost its chance of independence from Capitol Hill when House and Senate conferees on the financial regulatory reform bill yanked Senate-passed language that would have allowed the SEC to fund itself.
Last month as the House-Senate conference was going on, brokers and advisors fought to a standstill over whether the fiduciary duty to customers currently imposed on advisors should be extended to brokers and insurance sellers.
The Department of Labor has intervened in a class-action lawsuit brought against the McGraw-Hill Companies over the purchase of the firm’s own stock by its employee defined contribution plan.
The Securities and Exchange Commission has proposed updating its antifraud guidance as part of a package of reforms aimed at improving the information given to investors in target-date funds and clarifying the meaning of a date in such funds.
Securities and Exchange Commission and bank regulatory agency officials are working out how to separate bona fide bank collective investment trusts from the phenomenon of the “rent-a-collective trust.”
A senior Treasury Department official was told by plan sponsors last week that annuitizing defined contribution plans is not going anywhere because workers reject the costs they would have to pay to set up lifetime income accounts.
A bill to rationalize the taxing of mutual funds has gained a chance to become law this year, thanks to a hearing held June 15 by a subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee.
Even though Securities and Exchange Commission member Elisse Walter said she favored self-funding by the agency, Walter also reiterated in a London speech earlier this month that she nevertheless also wants a self-regulatory organization overseeing investment advisors.
The SPARK Institute has sprung into action in response to the launching of a 401(k) plan compliance check by the Internal Revenue Service.
Senior Obama administration officials testifying before the Senate Aging Committee next week will launch a discussion on how to free 401(k) plan sponsors from participant class-action lawsuits and big losses if the sponsor picks an annuity seller and the insurer later goes belly up.
Firms looking to shorten their exams can do so by pressuring their custodians to cooperate with the Securities and Exchange Commission's exam staffers, according to Norman Champ, associate regional director of the agency's New York office.
The congressionally-initiated study of whether rich or poor benefit from 401(k) tax deferrals is still grinding ahead at the Government Accountability Office, but at a considerable delay.
Fund boards were urged to keep an eye out for management attempting to convince fund boards to mindlessly sign off on management’s agenda.
The Government Finance Officers Association vote on June 8 to back the money market pricing status quo put more political muscle behind the fight to keep a stable net asset value for money market funds.
The Securities and Exchange Commission has granted no action relief to the American Bar Association’s retirement program for lawyers, the ABA Retirement Funds.
A ruling on 401(k) plan fee disclosure has been postponed after House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller (D-Ca.) reportedly flexed his muscles with the White House to halt a rival Department of Labor measure.
Senior industry officials gave the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority ringing endorsements as it seeks to become a self-regulatory organization for investment advisors.
Sparring between the two political parties over federal retirement policy has led to a letter from Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to the top Republican in the House of Representatives to clarify that the Treasury Department and the Department of Labor have not made any proposal to eliminate 401(k) plans or to force plans to offer annuities.
Big mutual fund firms could be headed for a collision with the "Volcker Rule" if Congress limits the possibility of exempting investment companies.
Just before the new money market fund rule reforms went into effect last week, the Securities and Exchange Commission staff put out Q&A guidance in response to firms’ compliance questions.
The Investment Company Institute restated on its Web site its case against forcing money market fund net asset values to be floated.
To spur more trust in these products by 401(k) sponsors and participants, Washington should create a federally guaranteed insurance fund for annuities and other lifetime income products, retirement security advocates say.
Robert Plaze, the senior Securities and Exchange Commission official on the President's Working Group charged with solving the problem of money fund maturity mismatches that blew up in 2008, does not have an answer.
The Securities and Exchange Commission has rejected the Swiss Helvetia Fund's attempt to omit a shareholder proposal from its 2010 proxy materials.
The Department of Labor has filed an amicus brief with the Seventh Circuit in the Lingis v. Motorola Inc. case, asking the circuit to reverse a district court’s finding that defendant Motorola could rely upon ERISA’s 404 fiduciary safe harbor even though the plan sponsor knew Motorola’s stock was an imprudent investment choice for company workers.