While my Professor from Stony Brook could see it a mile away, most of us couldn’t predict a President Donald Trump and I’m sure most of us never thought we’d see the Chicago Cubs ever win a World Series. Yet there are certain things that we can see a mile away in our business, yet we can’t do anything about it because it’s not our role to do anything.
Years ago, I said fee disclosure was going to come and revenue sharing was going to be questioned. I saw that fee disclosure regulations wasn’t going to be the sky falling and that plan sponsors weren’t going to terminate their plans in a panic. I could certainly predict a lot of providers were going to exit the business once they had to disclose fees.
I can see the impact of the Fiduciary Rule. The retirement plan industry will survive. Most broker-dealers will survive and thrive in the business after April and some won’t. Change is an easy thing to predict in the sense that some retirement plan providers will thrive in it and others will suffer. Unlike Professor Norpoth, I don’t need a research model to predict the future of this business. I can tell people my opinion in how I think things will turn out, but I’m just some small ERISA attorney and I can’t do anything to stop some of the bad decisions that certain broker-dealers will make in complying with this rule.
