Yes it's official - one of the largest changes to affect US wealth management in years is to be delayed until the summer.

The US Department of Labor has officially delayed by 60 days the date at which its fiduciary rule comes in, ending uncertainty over whether the postponement would happen to one of the largest changes affecting North American wealth management in decades.

The controversial decision to delay rollout of the rule, taken by the Trump administration, has prompted anger from some legislators in Congress, although those wealth management professionals who have spoken to Family Wealth Report said they expect the process to be delayed rather than halted. (FWR is the sister news service to this one.)

The fiduciary rule sets a test under which financial advisors are required to adhere to a “best interests” test for clients, a move seen as driving out use of commission payments and bringing in adoption of fee-based advisory models. A number of major financial groups, such as Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley, have already changed their fee models.

In a statement, the DoL issued a document that “extends for 60 days the applicability date of the final regulation, published on 8 April, 2016, defining who is a “fiduciary” under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 and the Internal Revenue Code of 1986”. 

The document also extended for 60 days the applicability dates of the Best Interest Contract Exemption and the Class Exemption for Principal Transactions in Certain Assets Between Investment Advice Fiduciaries and Employee Benefit Plans and IRAs, it said.

In March, delays to the launch of the rule were denounced by Democrat lawmakers. In a letter from 40 House Democrats they said the department was creating needless uncertainty and said the argument for delay by the Trump administration - to give time to consider the rule’s impact - was “specious”, according to a jointly-signed letter.

The rule, which had been due to take effect in April, imposes standards on how brokers charge clients to make sure they put customers’ interests first. The rule is designed, its supporters say, to make financial services in the US more professional and less subject to product “push” from fund providers and other entities. The rule is expected to affect about $3 trillion of client assets in the US.

A concern has been that while a move towards more fee-based advice - an approach seen in the UK, for example - can make advice more objective and reduce “product push”, it may also not be ideal for all kinds of client and force some players out of business (as has happened in the UK after reforms came in from 2013).