Nevin's Data "Points"

So, advisors, how does it feel to be compared to a termite? That’s right, a powerful coalition of retirement, union, and so-called consumer protection groups has launched a new attack on retirement plan advisors. They’re doing so ahead of the president’s State of the Union address, and doing so now because he is expected to throw his support behind the Department of Labor’s fiduciary rule (re)proposal. Yes, that one. Not that they yet know what they are supporting. In a new website launched to help promote their position, even they say “If the Department gets the rule right…”, apparently relying on the word of the Department of Labor that “…its goal is to make sure that all financial professionals have a legal obligation to put the interests of their customers first when they offer retirement advice.” We don’t yet know what will be in this latest version. What we do know is that the last version raised significant concerns about its impact on the retirement plan marketplace,...

I recently had the opportunity to attend The National Financial Capability Study Roundtable, where a variety of researchers (including EBRI’s Sudipto Banerjee) presented, discussed, and challenged a variety of research papers on topics ranging from financial literacy and retirement planning to financial advice, and from financial literacy and financial behavior to “Prohibition, Price Caps and Disclosure”.   Taken as a whole, the day’s discussions focused on ways to better understand and measure the factors that appear to influence individual behaviors regarding their finances.   Simply stated, financial literacy is generally described as the ability to understand finance.   More recently, some have begun to focus on financial capability 1 .   Research has shown that people with higher levels of financial literacy approach retirement with much higher levels of wealth.   However, a growing body of research also suggests that most Americans have limited kno...