Morningstar and the American Retirement Association Partner on Fiduciary Education Program
Investment research provider Morningstar Inc. (NASDAQ: MORN) and the American Retirement Association have partnered to develop an education program to help advisors navigate the new regulatory environment.
“Regulations come, go and change all of the time,” said Brian Graff, chief executive officer of the American Retirement Association. “While there has been an enormous focus on complying with the Labor Department’s new fiduciary regulation, the SEC and FINRA have both already signaled their intent to introduce additional fiduciary regulations. The professional adviser of the future must build his or her practice on proven fiduciary adviser best practices that look beyond today’s requirements and that’s what our IRA Fiduciary Adviser program will provide.”
The IRA Fiduciary Adviser education program will be delivered through Morningstar Advisor Workstation to provide tracking and reporting mechanisms to support broker-dealer and registered investment adviser compliance requirements.
“Advisers who work with retirement accounts, particularly IRAs, will need to conform with a higher, and for some dramatically, higher standard of care, but that’s only the beginning,” Graff explained. “More than education, this program sets a new standard for fiduciary practices that goes beyond the mere letter of the law, elevating advisory practices to an entirely new level of excellence…”
Morningstar provides data on more than 510,000 investment offerings, including stocks, mutual funds, and similar vehicles, along with real-time global market data on more than 17 million equities, indexes, futures, options, commodities, and precious metals, in addition to foreign exchange and Treasury markets. Morningstar also offers investment management services through its investment advisory subsidiaries, with more than $180 billion in assets under advisement and management as of Dec. 31, 2015.
The American Retirement Association, based in the Washington, D.C. area, is a non-profit professional organization established to educate retirement plan professionals. The American Retirement Association is comprised of four retirement industry associations; the American Society of Pension Professionals & Actuaries, the ASPPA College of Pension Actuaries, the National Association of Plan Advisors, and the National Tax-deferred Savings Association.
