Advocacy in action blog

The federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) has provided more than $517 billion in COVID-19 relief loans to nearly 5 million employers across the United States. Nearly 170,000 loans have gone to companies in the finance and insurance sector, while many more have gone to small businesses served by NAIFA members and other financial professionals. As of July 7, more than $130 billion remained in PPP funding, according to the Small Business Administration.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has issued a Risk Alert warning about an increase in cybercrimes targeting financial professionals and institutions. The document, issued by the SEC’s Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations (OCIE), says scammers have targeted “broker-dealers, investment advisers, and investment companies” and others in the financial services industry with phishing and ransomware attacks.

NAIFA Assistant Vice President of Government Relations Judi Carsrud provided members of Women in Insurance and Financial Services (WIFS) in Central Pennsylvania a briefing on the SECURE Act and the Security and Exchange Commission’s Regulation Best Interest (Reg BI) in a virtual meeting on Thursday.

The U.S. Department of Labor has proposed a new rule to govern the standard of care for producers providing consumers with retirement guidance and products. NAIFA was a part of the lawsuit, along with the American Council of Life Insurers and other groups, that resulted in the DOL’s original fiduciary rule being struck down by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in 2018. The new proposal would create a “best interest” prohibited transaction exemption (PTE) for ERISA- and Internal Revenue Code-covered investment advice fiduciaries.

In an opinion published last Friday, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the validity of the SEC’s Regulation Best Interest and rejected the challenge to the rule which had been filed last fall by a group of state attorneys general and several private financial firms. The court did not agree with the plaintiffs’ claim that the Dodd Frank Act required the SEC, if it chose to act, to adopt a standard of conduct for broker-dealers that paralleled the fiduciary standard applicable to investment advisers under the Investment Advisers Act.

NAIFA-Georgia is celebrating a win. HB 716 (Insurance; carriers issuing a health benefit plan in this state through an agent shall file proposed commission rates with the department) passed the Senate unanimously on June 26. 

Ohio’s Department of Insurance recently proposed updates to its “3901-6-13 Suitability Annuity Transactions” rule.  The state’s Director of Insurance, Jillian Froment, chaired the National Association of Insurance Commissioner’s Annuity Suitability Working Group while the working group crafted revisions to the NAIC’s “Suitability In Annuity Transactions Model Regulation (#275).”  As expected, the Ohio proposal is similar to the model. It establishes a new standard of conduct that goes beyond the rule’s current suitability standard, but it is not a fiduciary standard. 

NAIFA Senior Vice President of Government Relations Diane Boyle provided an advocacy update during NAIFA’s Town Hall, “The State of NAIFA on Our 130th Anniversary.”

SEC Chairman Jay Clayton issued a statement June 15 reminding financial firms and advisors of the new, enhanced conduct standards found in Regulation Best Interest. Reg BI requires broker-dealers and their representatives to act in the best interest of their clients when making recommendations, and to not put the firm’s or representatives’s financial interests ahead of the consumer’s.

On June 17, the U.S. Small Business Administration, in consultation with the Department of the Treasury, posted a revised, borrower-friendly Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan forgiveness application implementing the PPP Flexibility Act of 2020, signed into law by President Trump on June 5, 2020.  In addition to revising the full forgiveness application, SBA also published a new EZ version of the forgiveness application that applies to borrowers that: