The compensation disclosure regulations refer brokers to follow the retirement plan guidance. What is the retirement plan language on disclosing commissions that brokers should use?
Unfortunately, when the Department of Labor issued its retirement plan fee disclosure guidance, it did not issue many concrete tools to help service providers figure out how to comply with the regulations (other than the regulations themselves and some FAQs on specific issues raised by the regulations). The following items may be helpful in thinking about how retirement plan service providers disclose commissions and other fees:
- A DOL guide published in 2014 to help service providers show where certain provisions were included in their service agreements or fee disclosures, and which is sometimes used by service providers even though not required by the DOL.
- A DOL fact sheet that was published along with the final regulations that provides some helpful summary-level information as to what should go into a 408(b)(2) disclosure.
A sample 408(b)(2) fee disclosure used by Fi36