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WASHINGTON A key issue for both agents and companies in legislation passed by the House in December and proposed in draft legislation by Sen. Chris Dodd., D-Conn., chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, would create the highest standard of care, a fiduciary standard, for everyone selling investment products, even the limited number of products sold by insurance agents and investment advisors. The House legislation, H.R. 4173, the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, creates a harmonized fiduciary standard of care for broker-dealers and investment advisers when they provide personalized investment advice about securities. While the industry won a limited safe harbor from the most onerous provisions of the bill, it still remains concerned about the impact on agents. The National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors opposes the provision. “NAIFA believes that if there is going to be a harmonized standard, then there should be equal enforcement of the standard,” said Tom Currey, NAIFA president. The provision gives the Securities and Exchange Commission discretionary rulemaking authority to harmonize the standard of care investment advisors and brokers and dealers must provide to their customers when selling investment products. The draft legislation unveiled by Sen. Dodd is similar to the House bill, which passed Dec. 11. Insurance agent trade groups, in a letter to members of the Senate Banking Committee, said the provision is “enormously costly” and would have a “counterproductive impact.” The letter was signed by officials of the Association for Advanced Life Underwriting; the National Association of Independent Life Brokerage Agencies and NAIFA. The letter also calls the proposed provision “a radical departure from current law.” The industry is asking the panel to replace the provision with language calling for a single standard with a requirement that the Securities and Exchange Commission conduct a detailed study of the issue. Meanwhile, Dodd has abandoned his unilateral approach and has divided up the bill into separate titles, and assigned rewriting of the legislation to two-member, bipartisan panels of his committee.