Nineteen organizations and individuals that advocate on behalf of consumers, workers, investors and retirees have called on the Department of Labor to withdraw its controversial policy statement opening the door to private equity investments in 401(k) plans.
The SEC has released new guidance on corporate disclosures in light of COVID, which includes a recommendation that companies disclose more information about health and safety policies. We see this as a positive first step toward requiring the disclosures requested in a letter sent to the SEC last week by Americans for Financial Reform and nearly 100 other organizations.
The problems the SEC identified include fund managers’ failure to make full and fair disclosure of conflicts of interest, charging improper fees, and failure to implement policies to prevent staff from trading on material non-public information. In other words, the SEC’s examinations have shown that private equity and hedge fund managers are consistently engaged in self-dealing and overcharging investors, like pension funds that provide for the retirement security of millions of Americans.
With the country struggling to address pandemic-related economic disruptions that have made it harder than ever for working Americans to save for a secure and independent retirement, the Department of Labor (“DOL”) is expected to release its new investment advice rule for retirement plans within weeks, if not days. Advocates for workers, investors, and retirees are concerned the new rule could make matters worse by stripping retirement savers of already inadequate protections from faulty investment advice.
This legislation will create vitally needed new public protections by putting constraints on the collection, use, sharing, and selling of our personal data by financial services companies and all firms.
This legislation will create vitally needed new public protections by putting constraints on the collection, use, sharing, and selling of our personal data by financial services companies and all firms. The Data Accountability and Transparency Act’s bright-line approach appropriately shifts the burden of privacy protection away from consumers, who have minimal resources to protect themselves, and toward corporations, which profit immensely from the aggregation of our data.