The American Council of Life Insurers (ACLI) has put its support behind a lawsuit challenging the Labor Department’s subsequent guidance on the fiduciary rule. The ACLI is the nation’s largest life insurance trade association. The group added an amicus brief to an ongoing lawsuit by the Federation of Americans for Consumer Choices against the DOL. The suit, which was filed in March, claimed that agents “oftentimes make rollover recommendations for purchase of annuities to IRA owners and participants in employer-sponsored 401k and similar benefit plans, for which they receive commissions or other compensation from annuity issuers.” The concern is that these agents will be adversely affected by the DOL’s new interpretation of the Fiduciary Rule that categorizes their status as investment advice fiduciaries under ERISA. ACLI believes that the new interpretation would achieve the same outcome as the 2016 Fiduciary Rule, which was rejected in the Fifth Circuit court. ACLI was one of the lead plaintiffs in that decision.

Finsum:The American Council of Life Insurers has put its support behind an ongoing lawsuit against the DOL and their new interpretation of the Fiduciary Rule.

Anyone notice that stocks, lately, have been a bit, well, prickly?

Of course, for awhile there, it segued they’d found their mojo and watching cable shows like CNBC also was a popcorn worthy occasion. Now, that viewing experience likely would give you indigestion.

In other words, yes: vo-la-ti-li-ty.

Now, could this be hitting the gas pedal on an even steeper decline.

Let’s count the possible dividends. In the short term, the wraps are on the corporate earnings season, according to ally.com, and summer? Ready to wave buh-bye. In the eye of an obvious lack of direction, it’s all but an invitation for percolating volatility, the site continued.

Meantime, investors are sliding their attention from the probabilities of a recession and how the markets will react to the Fed.

Against that less than appealing backdrop, Jesmond Mizzi Financial Advisors’ Head of Wealth Management Colin Vella, said that rather than ruing the circumstances surrounding the volatility, investors can make the best of it, according to jesmondmizzi.com.

The global initiative – unlike the war – to get a handle on COVID 19 reassured markets that bouncing back to more normal conditions could be on the short term horizon. 

As the virus started to escalate worldwide, at the dawn of 2020, markets began their descent. However, the downturn didn’t have staying power and bounced back prior to the initial lockdowns.

How often does opportunity knock? Well, financial advisors could be hand wringing if they allow a chance to further buck up their business with model portfolio strategies and step up the client experience slip through their fingers, according to etftrends.com.

Shucking aside, simply put, a model’s a framework for a financial advisor, explained Brad Shepard, head of Advisor Innovation, WisdomTree Asset Management, said in a webcast, How to Build a Better Business with Model Portfolios. It enables the advisor to structure asset allocation and fund selection in their practice on behalf of a client, the continued.

Leveraging model portfolios to outsource the management of portfolios can help abet a greater degree of a client centric model and enhance the competitiveness of a business model, noted investmentnews.com.

According to Investment News, four examples of outsourcing options upon which advisors are implement that can rachet up firm operations and, possibly, culminate in ideal results:

1.Virtual administration services
2. HR assistance
3. An outsourced CFO
4.Portfolio management

Anyone see the copy desk? It appears the definition of the fiduciary might be in for a rewrite, according to winkintel.com.

At this point, the Department of Labor needs to rewrite its fiduciary definition to all but make all first time advice fiduciary is just about the lone thing still on the table, analysts concur.

In that event, the alternation would pull weight and basically revert the DOL back to its maiden 2016 fiduciary rule, said Brad Campbell, partner at Faegre Drinker law firm. As it stands, the DOL’s package known as the investment advice rule makes rollover advice fiduciary, the site continued.

Valuable investment advice consists of two primary elements. One evolves around a new prohibited transaction exemption. Here, advisors can provide conflicted advice for commissions. The other is a reinstatement of the 1975 “live part test” in order to ascertain that which constitutes advice on investments.

Campbell noted the initiative’s “likely to be a very substantial proposal that will harken back to legal fights of 2016, which the DOL ultimately lost,” according to fa-mag.com.

The DOL, he continued, “is taking the position that fiduciary starts with the initial or rollover conversation. That's a pretty aggressive reinterpretation of what they historically had said, which frankly was ... that most rollovers were not fiduciary,”.

There is no question ESG strategies have seen their fair share of negative press lately, but a new deterrent for investors may lead to more pressure for some asset managers. According to a paper by André Wattø Sjuve, a scholar from the Norwegian School of Economics, ESG funds that charge higher fees are seeing outflows, while ESG funds that charge lower fees are seeing inflows. The study looked at the capital flow data of over 16,000 mutual funds during a period between August 2018 and September 2021. These findings indicate that investors are just as concerned over high fees with ESG funds as they are with other strategies. This doesn’t bode well for asset managers charging higher fees based on the massive demand for sustainable investing strategies. Sjuve believes a possible explanation for outflows out of expensive funds is that prices of ESG assets have risen substantially over the past few years and investors could be concerned about the prospects of future returns.

Finsum:As theprices of ESG assets skyrocket, investors are leaving higher fee ESG strategies for lower-cost funds.