"Fiduciary advocates have lamented that the [DOL] conceded several major points ... However, it appears that in reality the DOL fiduciary rule concessions were a brilliantly executed strategy of conceding to the financial services industry the exact parts that didn't actually matter in the long run (while still reducing the risk of a legal challenge), yet keeping the key components that mattered the most: a requirement for Financial Institutions to adopt policies and procedures to mitigate material conflicts of interest and eliminate incentives that could compromise the objectivity of their advisors ... and a second requirement that clients can no longer be forced to waive 100% of their legal rights and accept mandatory arbitration, instead stipulating that while an individual client dispute may be required to go to arbitration, consumers must retain the right to pursue a class action lawsuit against a Financial Institution that fails to honor its aggregate fiduciary obligations."

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