U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) last week unveiled two pieces of legislation that seek to protect millions of Americans’ retirement savings.
“Fiduciaries’ sole responsibility is to prioritize what is best for the workers’ hard-earned savings,” Sen. Cassidy said. “These pro-worker, pro-family bills protect millions of Americans’ retirement savings from political ideology.”
Sen. Cassidy on Oct. 30 sponsored the Restoring Integrity in Fiduciary Duty Act, S. 3086, with a Republican cosponsor to protect American workers’ retirements from progressive activists by reinforcing the boundaries within which fiduciaries may act.
For instance, fiduciaries would only be able to consider the financial factors of an investment and make random choices when two investment options are identical, according to a bill summary provided by Sen. Cassidy’s staff.
Additionally, S. 3086 would reaffirm that the fiduciary duties of prudence and loyalty in ERISA, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, include the exercise of shareholder rights and proxy voting.
Also on Oct. 30, Sen. Cassidy cosponsored the Providing Complete Information to Retirement Investors Act, S. 3083, alongside bill sponsor U.S. Sen. Jim Banks (R-IN), who also cosponsored S. 3086.
If enacted, S. 3083 would require employer-sponsored defined contribution plans to explain to participants the difference between choosing investments selected by ERISA fiduciaries and those self-selected through a brokerage window.
The measure also would require ERISA plans to provide a notice to investors each time they allocate money into or out of a brokerage window that such investments were not selected by a fiduciary and may result in lower returns, the summary says.
Both bills have been referred for consideration to the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, which is chaired by Sen. Cassidy.