Kent Mason Featured in Insurance News Net Article Discussing Department of Labor Fiduciary Rule
- Published Date: May 18, 2026
On May 13, 2026, Insurance News Net published an article titled, “Will the Department of Labor take another shot at a fiduciary rule?” where Davis & Harman Partner, Kent Mason, was quoted describing the back and forth between Republican and Democrat administrations.
The Department of Labor (DOL) has reinstated the 1975 five-part test to define an investment advice fiduciary, replacing the former Biden-era fiduciary rule, and also reinstated the 2005 Desert Letter, which provides that rollover advice is not fiduciary advice unless it is given by an entity that is otherwise a fiduciary. The reinstatements confirm, for example, that recommending a one-time rollover from an employer-sponsored plan to an individual retirement account does not make a financial professional a fiduciary.
Efforts to extend a fiduciary duty, for example, to the sale of investment products can be dated back to at least 2010, with Republican administrations generally opposing the idea and Democrats pushing for stricter rules.
Mason is quoted saying that the “back-and-forth could continue if a Democrat wins the White House in 2028. I would not be surprised if a Democratic administration tried again. I think if they tried anything similar to what they did in 2016 or 2024, they’ll get invalidated again.”
Mason continued by explaining that “extending fiduciary status is counterintuitive . . . Under the 2024 rule, or the 2016 rule . . . the financial institutions generally said to themselves, ‘Look, the cost of providing advice and the risks involved are so prohibitive that we will do it for the large accounts, but we just can’t afford to do it for the small and mid-sized accounts.’”
“There has been discussion within the industry of a lobbying push for legislation to codify the five-part test and the Deseret Letter interpretation or otherwise remove the fiduciary threat,” Mason said. “The problem is getting to 60 votes in the Senate.”
“Republican proponents would have to make enormous compromises to get Democrats on board,” Mason noted. “With favorable court decisions on the fiduciary issue, conceding ground seems ill-advised.”
“Right now, we’re in a good place,” Mason said. “And I’m not saying a good place from an industry perspective. I’m saying a good place for individuals. Because what they did in 2016 backfired. It hurt low- and middle-income individuals.”
“We certainly hope that things are settled,” Mason said. “The amount of cost and disruption and harm to participants from the last 16 years has been very unfortunate.”
A link to the article can be found here.
