Many financial advisers who make recommendations about how to invest for retirement would be subject to new ethical requirements under regulations recently proposed by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) that aim to address conflicts of interest in providing retirement investment advice.
The proposed change, known as the “retirement security rule,” widens the situations in which a financial services provider qualifies as an "investment advice fiduciary" and thus is subject to related duties of prudence, loyalty and so forth.
To help understand how the proposed retirement security rule might affect CPAs and CPA financial planners, the Journal of Accountancy spoke with DOL Deputy Assistant Secretary Timothy D. Hauser. Read the Q&A.