A trio of U.S. industry organizations that represent financial planners is lobbying against proposed legislation that it says would undermine efforts to impose new fiduciary standards.

The Financial Planning Coalition — which brings together the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, Inc. (CFP Board), the Financial Planning Association (FPA), and the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (NAPFA) — has written to legislators, calling on them to oppose a bill that, it says, would delay, or even prevent, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Department of Labor (DOL) from developing uniform fiduciary rules.

The coalition says that the bill (H.R. 2374), known as the Retail Investor Protection Act, “is an investor protection bill in name only”.

It warns that the bill “would prevent [the SEC and DOL] from engaging in rulemaking crucial to investor protection and would leave American investors more vulnerable to potential abuses.”

The group says that it sees the bill as a ‘back door’ attempt to undermine investor protection provisions that were introduced in the post-crisis U.S. regulatory reform known as Dodd-Frank; and to prevent the SEC and DOL “from proceeding with investor protection rulemakings consistent with appropriate cost-benefit analyses and routine inter-agency coordination.”

It notes that the proposed legislation would impede the DOL’s effort to introduce a fiduciary rule of its own by prohibiting it from adopting a fiduciary rule until after the SEC has adopted a final uniform fiduciary rule. This, it warns, effectively prevents “the DOL from implementing its own regulations should the SEC decide not to proceed with its own rulemaking.”