From Advisers selling DC plans must improve fee disclosure (subsciption required) by Rick Miller on November 1, 2004:

However, there are those who believe that the majority of brokers who sell plans for a commission—and don’t consider themselves fiduciaries—are not always being straightforward about their compensation.

“In my opinion, more don’t provide disclosure in an explicit form than do,” said Jon C. Chambers, principal of Schultz Collins Lawson Chambers Inc. in San Francisco, a consulting firm and registered investment adviser supporting about $1 billion in retirement plan assets. “The majority make sure the prospectuses are delivered, things like that, but is that really disclosure?”

The quandary is that while plan fiduciaries have an obligation to understand plan fees, he said, non-fiduciary brokers and advisers have no legal requirement to assist plan sponsors in that process.

“The plan sponsor has a fiduciary duty to assess whether the broker is adding sufficient value to justify the compensation, but the broker doesn’t have a duty back to the plan to report how much they are getting beyond their FINRA general-disclosure duties,” Mr. Chambers said. “They don’t have any extra fiduciary duties unless they cross that line and render investment advice.”