Castle Rock Investment Company

Independent Guide, Trusted Partner.

John Hancock

What’s Going On?

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Source: Bloomberg
Source: Bloomberg

A fiduciary duty, the obligation to uphold the clients’ interest above all else, is Phyllis Borzi’s long sought and tunneled for goal that we at Castle Rock uphold and agree whole-heartedly with. Together, our standards are the highest in the retirement industry. She says that, like in the movie Groundhog Day, bad policies keep being relived over and over. We want to stop the origin of the problem: the poor incentive structure.

Her aim is to make incentives to advisors as straightforward as possible in retirement plans so that the resulting fees will not surprise retirees and leave them with less than they planned.

When investment advisors do not sign up to be fiduciaries to the plans they advise, it leads to corruption and changes the fee structures of these plans so that the retirees no longer have the same security after 65 (typical retirement age). Liability to the Plan Sponsor also changes, and the integrity of the investment advisor themselves is challenged as well.

One example of how the Plan Sponsors are hung out to dry is the John Hancock case, where unreasonable fees were not seen as criminal because of this legal loophole.

Sign your support for reform here at SaveOurRetirement.com!

 

Michele L. Suriano, Accredited Investment Fiduciary™, is president of Castle Rock Investment Company, a woman-owned SEC registered investment advisory firm serving qualified retirement plans. www.CastleRockInvesting.com

Sometimes life isn’t fair…for a fiduciary.

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Sometimes the law isn’t fair.

But sometimes, it seems unfair because you don’t know the rules.

In the recent case of Santomenno v. John Hancock, poor understanding led plan sponsors to agree to terms that led to excessive fees charged by the service provider to the plan. Either the plan sponsors were unaware of what they signed up for, or the service provider duped them. On September 26, 2014, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the District Court’s decision to grant John Hancock’s motion to dismiss, ruling that John Hancock was not a fiduciary – therefore, it was not required to watch out for imprudent or disloyal activities such as excessive fees.

[Read more…] about Sometimes life isn’t fair…for a fiduciary.