March 19, 2004
Your proposed ruling is fine, as far as it goes. It is my belief that an investor should have access to information regarding the full cost of any investment being considered, 529 or otherwise. The 529 plans seem to require an adminstrator. For some investors, that is not necessary. They can run their own plan just as they run their own IRA. At any rate, all fees and expenses should be laid out in laymans terms, whether those items are hard or soft dollar items. And brokers should be required to address any question which an investor has about this information. The Mutual Fund and Brokerage industries have operated in this area with minimal oversight until recently. Now, there seems to be a general mistrust among the individual investor community. Both of these conditions are unfortunate and hopefully can be alleviated with greater disclosure and oversight.
Thank you for this opporunity to comment.