Don Trone says fiduciary best practices fall short on judgment

Fiduciary best practices assembled 25 years ago are no longer the highest expression of fiduciary care, Don Trone argues in a 401(k) Specialist commentary published Nov. 3.

The framework remains useful for organizing responsibilities, evaluating investments, managing conflicts and documenting decisions, he writes. What changed, in his account, is the arrival of artificial intelligence, which exposes the limits of treating those practices as the ceiling.

Advisers who sit with 401(k) committees have a sharper due-diligence question from the piece: whether the file shows how a decision was reasoned, not only that it was minuted. A committee can review its reports, follow its investment policy and record a unanimous vote while overlooking a flawed assumption, Trone writes. Members may defer to a dominant personality, suppress disagreement or accept an advisor's confidence as evidence. The documentation can look exemplary while the decision warrants deeper scrutiny.

Trone separates artificial intelligence from what he calls Augmented Intelligence, a partnership in which technology enhances human capability, judgment and execution. The uses he describes compare documents, organize evidence, generate alternative scenarios and identify questions that deserve investigation. Speed by itself does not produce better stewardship. "A system that accelerates an unquestioned assumption may simply help a committee arrive at a poor decision more efficiently," he writes.

He calls the frame Behavioral Governance, focused on how people interpret evidence. He asks the profession to reconsider what it teaches, measures and expects from fiduciaries. For a sponsor, the practical weight shifts from assembling the file to showing what the committee did with the assumption underneath the vote.