It took most of President Trump’s first 100 days in office to get his Labor Secretary in place.

But it took just minutes after the swearing in of Alexander Acosta for industry to mount calls for him to further extend the June 9 implementation data of the fiduciary rule.

The Financial Services Roundtable was among industry organizations to offer a quick congratulation to Sec. Acosta, and call on him to delay the entirety of the rule until the agency completes the new economic and legal analysis ordered by Presidential memorandum.

And days later, more than 100 Republican lawmakers in the House of Representatives followed suit, “strongly” encouraging Acosta to issue a further delay until the new analysis of the rule is completed.

In April, Labor’s Employee Benefits Security Administration delayed the implementation of the rule’s impartial conduct standard until June 9, when all advice on IRAs and 401(k) plans with less than $50 million in assets will have to be made in retirement investors’ best interests, compensation will have to be reasonable, and service providers will be prohibited from giving misleading statements.

Under the original implementation date schedule, firms were required to acknowledge their fiduciary status in writing, along with a description of material conflicts of interest. But under the delay, that requirement was pushed off until January 1, 2018, when full compliance with the rule is slated.

Some attorneys described the delay in requiring written acknowledgement of fiduciary status as significant relief. In issuing the delay, EBSA officials said they took a “balanced” approach, and called the delay “noncontroversial.”

But opponents of the rule did not agree with that assessment.

Attorneys for Davis & Harmon, which lobbies on behalf of financial services and insurance providers, said the claim that the delay was noncontroversial is inconsistent with the “thousands of pages of intense concerns about the definition of a fiduciary” made in comments to Labor throughout the rulemaking process.

TIAA, Vanguard, LPL, FINRA, the American Benefits Council, and the Committee of Annuity Insurers were among Davis & Harmon’s clients in 2016, according to opensecrets.org.

Labor officials have said they expect the full analysis of the rule to be completed by January 1, 2018, when providers will have to comply with the rule’s Best Interest Contract Exemption, and be subject to its private right of action provision.

Some analysts have portrayed Labor’s June 9 impartial standard requirement as an act of open defiance against President Trump’s memorandum.

In a recent opinion piece published in The Hill, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum, a conservative think tank, called Labor’s decision to implement the impartial conduct standard on June 9 “bureaucratic tomfoolery at its finest” that should not be tolerated.

“Holdover Obama administration employees at DOL snuck language into the 60-day delay rule that effectively says, ‘we don’t care what the president ordered. You can have your 60-day delay, but the rule will go into effect immediately on day 61 no matter what’,” wrote Holtz-Eakin.

Some corners of the financial services and insurance industries appear to be embracing that thesis.

A letter by the National Association of Fixed Annuities, which is mounting an appeal of a ruling in the Washington, D.C. District Court that upheld the fiduciary rule, said the organization is appealing directly to President Trump and Secretary Acosta to stop any part of the rule from being implemented before the full analysis ordered by Trump is completed.

“We have a little more than a month to stop this runaway train,” the letter said. “NAFA is pulling out all the stops to try to prevent any part of this rule going live on June 9th.”

Instant Insights /

Sec. Acosta under pressure from lawmakers, industry to further delay fiduciary rule

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