Within the next few months, the Department of Labor hopes to come up with final regulations on 401(k) investment advice, said Phyllis Borzi, head of the department's Employee Benefits Securities Administration, during the ICI conference last week. Borzi's comments were picked up by some media outlets and is the subject of Wednesday's Wall Street Journal Fund Track column.

The deparment unveiled proposed regs in February of this year and received a total of 70 comments. The comment period ended Wednesday last week.

"Hopefully within the next few months, we'll be able to finalize the regs," Borzi told ICI conference attendees last Friday.

Borzi gave mutual fund executives an update on other initiatives the department is working on, such as target-date funds, plan-level fee disclosure and participant disclosure.

Her appearance at the ICI GMM came less than a day after the DoL and SEC issued joint guidance on target-date funds.

One of the reasons the DoL-SEC target-date guidance took "so long," Borzi said, was because "we kept reworking it so ordinary participants can understand."

The second phase of the target-date effort involves the release of a checklist for fiduciaries to use.

"Hopefully, we can get something out in the next couple of weeks," Borzi said.

The third piece of the target-date initiative is a plan by the DoL to publish an amendment to QDIA regulation in August. This is aimed at ensuring that plan participants are armed with comprehensive information to evaluate target-date or similar funds that are designated as their plan's default investment. 

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