DOL Investment-Selection Proposed Regulations: What Advisors and Clients Are Saying

DOL Investment-Selection Proposed Regulations: What Advisors and Clients Are Saying Jeffrey H. Snyder Sat, June 20, 2026 at 9:30 PM GMT+7 13 min read Kutak Rock s John Schembari provides a concise deep-dive into the Department of Labor’s proposed investment-selection regulations and the industry reaction after a roughly 60-day comment period that produced ~45,000 responses. Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network Well, John, it s always great to see you. Thanks for joining us this morning. Absolutely, Jeff, great to be here. And I would assume that things are warming up in Omaha, Nebraska these days? Things are warming up and we ve got the College World Series here in town, so lots of visitors, it s wonderful. Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network Yeah, well, good for you. I always enjoy the College World Series. I always wish I could hit those baseballs, but no luck on my end in terms of coordination. John, I m so glad we could connect because I wanted to reach out. Last time we had you on, I think we talked about the new Department of Labor proposed regulations about investment selection. The comment period is now over. And what have you heard? What are you hearing from your peers? What are you hearing from advisors? Yeah, so I think the last time we chatted, they had just opened up the comment period and that was back in March 30th. It was open for 60 days, so it ended in June 1, there June 1, June 2nd. The Department of Labor received right around 45,000 comments. So it s kind of hard to say exactly what all of those comments are, but there are certainly buckets that those comments fell in. The vast majority of the comments, I think are very favorable. Employers love the guidance. They love the idea of a proposed safe harbor. They love the fact that the regulation was kind of written as a warning shot to plaintiff s lawyers and the judges to protect fiduciaries. So that was super positive. But not surprisingly, we had some not favorable comments as well. Organizations like AARP or the AFL-CIO, they were concerned that this regulation will open up 401k plans to very risky investments that are not well suited for the average participant. So valid concerns, maybe a little political because the regulation is asset neutral. The regulation in no way endorses a certain type of investment. So we had that type of commentary. We had commentary from organizations that clearly had a personal interest in it. So for example, like TIAA-CREF, they wanted to see more guidance on annuities in investments. Comments from Morningstar wanted to see more of a focus on the types of guidance that Morningstar issues, not surprisingly. Some of the record keepers that offer proprietary products had other comments in there. Investment consultants, they loved it because one of the things in the proposed regulation is a strong suggestion that if fiduciaries don t have an investment consultant, they might need to have one. So that was music to the investment advisors ears. And so they really, really liked that. But overall, the commentary from fiduciaries, the people that I work with, was overwhelmingly positive. Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network Yeah, I want to kind of follow up on something you mentioned, maybe some groups that thought that it was going to open things up to maybe products that they feel don t belong or believe don t belong. But this, and I think part of that maybe, I want to get your reaction to this, part of that maybe is how this rule has been portrayed in terms of marketing, in terms of press. It s been often tied to private markets in particular, but to your point, the fiduciary, so in the case of the AFFL, CIO, or whoever is in charge of a particular retirement plan at 401k, they have the ultimate say, right? In terms of what products or products they put in or don t put into the plan. Absolutely, yeah. The head of the DOL, Dan Aronowitz, I mean, he came out and said, they are in no way endorsing any type of investment. They are not endorsing private equity, private credit, cryptocurrency. They do want to make it easier for fiduciaries to evaluate all types of investments. So the reason I think it was portrayed this way in the press, Jeff, was this all started from the Trump administration. So last year, the Trump administration says, we want to make it easier for 401k plans to invest in crypto and private credit, private equity. And they told the DOL, make it easier for fiduciaries to do that. The DOL did their job, but they said, you know what? It s kind of weird that you want a specific rule that makes it easy to do these sophisticated, unique investments, and for 50 years, we ve never given any guidance on how to do a plain vanilla investment. So the DOL said, you know what? The right thing to do is an asset neutral safe harbor that would apply to a decision to add crypto, private equity, a money market fund, an S&P 500 index, anything falls within this safe har

DOL Investment-Selection Proposed Regulations: What Advisors and Clients Are Saying

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