PUBLIC SUBMISSION

As of: 5/26/15 5:20 PM

Received: May 18, 2015

Status: Pending_Post

Tracking No. 1jz-8ix7-7mtb

Comments Due: July 06, 2015

Submission Type: Web

Docket: EBSA-2010-0050

Definition of the Term ‘‘Fiduciary’’; Conflict of Interest Rule—Retirement Investment Advice; 

Notice of proposed rulemaking and withdrawal of previous proposed rule.

Comment On: EBSA-2010-0050-0204

Definition of the Term Fiduciary; Conflict of Interest Rule-Retirement Investment Advice

Document: EBSA-2010-0050-DRAFT-0282

Comment on FR Doc # 2015-08831

Submitter Information

Name: Mark Ivcevich

Address: 

6930 Carroll Avenue, Ste. 402

Takoma Park, MD, 20912

Email: info@qp-consulting.com

Phone: 301-326-1521

General Comment

Our firm currently operates as a registered investment advisory firm and our primary advisory 

service is providing guidance and advice to plan sponsors of small firms as well as educating 

their participants on appropriate savings rates, investments, and income needs in retirement. In 

limited instances, we provide portfolio management services to employees either on assets not 

in the retirement plan (spousal retirement assets, IRA rollovers, etc). We work on a fixed fee for 

our services with a contract for those services and the fees clearly delineated with no revenue 

coming from third parties. The problem is our fee is typically more when we work for an 

individual because the services we provide are different and the assets we provide advice on are 

smaller (individual vs. institution). Under this new regulation, we would be unable to do this. 

I'll provide two very simple examples where this harms the participant. In real life scenario one, 

the participant retires. The company they worked at had recordkeeping and advisory fees paid 

out of plan assets. The cost of those two fees came to .60% of assets. Of this, our fee was .25% 

on the company retirement plan. Our fee for working on this account for an individual is .50%. 

The reason we recommended rolling into an IRA was three-fold, 1) The IRA did not have as 

high of transaction fees when the IRA holder needed money (or had to distribute money in the 

case of required minimum distributions), 2) The IRA allowed us to rebalance spousal assets 

across multiple accounts, 3) The net fee effect to the participant was a cost savings on the 

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transaction side as well as a savings of .10% because the aggregate fees were going from .60% 

to .50%. Unfortunately in the new regulation, we would not be able to work with this employee 

who has developed trust in our process over the years because even though our recommendation 

saves them money, it makes us more money (.50% vs. .25%). Even in scenarios where the 

opposite is true, we clearly outline any additional fees they would be taking on and in many 

cases, the added cost is worth the benefit of having aggregate account rebalancing and easier 

access to their money without having to go to their prior employer for distributions. The best 

interest contract does not allow an exemption in this situation and this directly hurts those 

investors and would be too onerous for us to continue to provide this service. In scenario two, 

I'll take the same case example from scenario one. If I am no longer allowed to work with this 

individual, I now have to deny their business and turn them lose to a myriad of brokers and 

insurance agents who can now sell them commissioned based products or wrap accounts with 

much greater fees simply because they were not also advising on the employers retirement plan. 

I fail to see how this benefits already confused investors. I would reiterate that this is not a big 

part of our firms business and we already operate as a fiduciary but we feel these problems with 

the regulation need to be addressed in the final version because these are real world scenarios 

we run into all the time and they will impact small investors.

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