The court docket’s choice “is instrumentally helpful for advocates of stronger fiduciary protections in funding recommendation to make that case,” Tierney stated.

Certainly, Ron Rhoades, affiliate professor of finance at Western Kentucky College and director of its private monetary planning program, stated in a current electronic mail that Reg BI “doesn’t impose a fiduciary obligation of loyalty” however “a brand new ‘finest curiosity’ obligation that’s nonetheless within the means of being outlined and utilized.”

With a brand new DOL fiduciary rule on the horizon, he stated, “the fiduciary battlegrounds will proceed to be lively spheres the place pro-fiduciary advocates might be pitted in opposition to corporations whose financial fashions are threatened by the fiduciary customary.”

Fiduciary Battleground

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court docket choice “provides extra traction to the continuing motion within the market, aided by fiduciary advocates and federal and state securities regulators, to maneuver towards a bona fide fiduciary customary,“ based on Rhoades.

Crucial facet of the Massachusetts choice, based on Rhoades, “is that states aren’t preempted from adopting fiduciary customary by federal securities legal guidelines,“ nor by the SEC’s adoption of Reg BI.

Whereas the Massachusetts choice “will not be binding upon different state courts, nor on the federal courts, its precedent could nicely give impetus to not less than a couple of different states to undertake fiduciary requirements for broker-dealers when offering funding recommendation to retail purchasers.“

An alert from the regulation agency Ropes & Grey concurred that the Massachusetts ruling “leaves the door open for different state regulators to set extra demanding requirements relevant to broker-dealers working of their states,“ and “raises a considerable risk of the very ‘patchwork of inconsistent state-level requirements’“ of which former SEC Chairman Jay Clayton warned.

Additional litigation in different state or federal jurisdictions could search to problem this reasoning.

Web Recommendation

The Ropes & Grey alert additionally warns that the Massachusetts ruling additionally applies to funding suggestions or recommendation supplied from exterior the state by way of the web.

For nationwide broker-dealers, together with these working web platforms, the choice “additional complicates compliance and will increase related prices in states that impose obligations, just like the Massachusetts Fiduciary Rule, that reach past Regulation BI’s obligations,” the alert stated.

“Explicit consideration might be required to evaluate what kinds of communications by broker-dealers relating to funding alternatives to retail buyers will be construed as funding suggestions or recommendation topic to heightened state-level requirements,” the agency wrote.

For instance, in Robinhood’s case, Galvin “claimed Robinhood had inspired frequent, dangerous, and unsuitable buying and selling by retail buyers, revealed funding classes like ‘100 Most In style’ or ‘High Movers,’ applied methods to incentivize buyer engagement with its buying and selling platform, and that every of those practices was tantamount to creating funding suggestions to clients,” the alert stated.

Robinhood’s defenses to those arguments, the agency wrote, “have but to be addressed by the trial court docket or within the Secretary’s administrative proceedings — because the litigation up to now has centered on the legality of the Massachusetts Fiduciary Rule itself, not its software to Robinhood’s enterprise.”