We fully expect to continue to see additional, coordinated media stories planted by the Department of Labor. Last week, we shared with you my response to the WSJ. And this week, I thought you'd like to see our formal reply to the Washington Post's front-page story titled, "Insurance lobbyists block federal crackdown on costly retirement advice." (Note: Tony's piece ran in the paper on Monday morning, and we shared this reply later Monday afternoon. We are still hopeful that the Post will print this reply.)
As always, I welcome your feedback and/or questions.
-Marc
As always, I welcome your feedback and/or questions.
-Marc
Letter to the Editor Submission
At this point, one has to believe the Department of Labor (DOL) walls are covered with posters that read, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” Facts, data, and the law be damned: the DOL is on a mission to purportedly “protect” consumers, after all.
Regarding Tony Romm’s article "Insurance lobbyists block federal crackdown on costly retirement advice," published on Sunday, August 11, in the Washington Post, for those of us who have even the tiniest understanding of the last fourteen years of the DOL’s ideological crusade to ban consumer access to financial advice, you were probably left wondering where all the context is.
Why is there no mention of the decade of voluminous evidence showing how this rule directly harms consumers and the financial professionals trying to help them (see: New York, the UK, and the US)? Why is there no mention of the independent research from Ernst and Young proving that a holistic financial plan is an essential element to achieving financial security and produces better outcomes for consumers?
Remember, this DOL campaign didn’t start with the Biden administration in 2023, it started with the Obama administration in 2010. Why does it take 21 paragraphs (in a 26-paragraph piece) to even mention the fact that the DOL has been trying to achieve this ban for years?
At present, tens of millions of Americans have little or no retirement savings. Many Americans rely on (or expect to) Social Security or a pension, but both typically fall far short of meeting their financial needs (and that’s to say nothing about SS’s impending insolvency).
The financial professionals on the front lines of what is unquestionably a looming retirement crisis are rightfully sounding the alarm. And rather than continuing to be undercut by some unelected DOL bureaucrats, we invite all public officials to come alongside us – like Congress has – to help solve this problem.
Frankly, instead of carrying the DOL’s water, the Post would be better-served to put to bed the supposed “protection” pieces like this one, and instead put a face to the millions of Americans, particularly within the low- and middle-income communities, who have been hurt by this nearly 15-year ideological crusade from the DOL.
Let’s make achieving financial security easier, not harder.
Marc Cadin, CEO of Finseca
