Tuesday Profile: Leading with ‘quiet competence’

 Don Auerbach exhibits the prudence and trustworthiness befitting a lobbyist for an industry that controls the retirement assets of millions of Americans.

He is given to making measured statements about pending legislation. When meeting with lawmakers, he comes armed with hard data backing his arguments. And he routinely offers his group’s trove of research on the saving and investing habits of Americans as a resource to lawmakers and their staffs.

{mosads}The director of financial services policy for the mutual fund industry’s main trade group, Auerbach acknowledges he strives for substance more than sizzle when it comes to lobbying. That approach seems to be serving his organization well. “I think we’re known for a quiet competence,” he says.

The Investment Company Institute (ICI) hardly needs a showman in order to get the attention of lawmakers. Roughly 90 million Americans invest in mutual funds, which are now the preferred vehicles for 401(k) plans. The fund companies and large financial services firms that make up ICI’s members together account for nearly the entire $12 trillion mutual fund industry in the United States.

With big numbers of fund investors in every congressional district, ICI might be tempted to throw its weight around on Capitol Hill. But the trade group prefers to burnish its credentials as a trusted source of information on what is often an emotional topic for lawmakers and voters alike.

Its reputation as a reliable and helpful resource has earned ICI impressive clout on a host of financial services issues, according to industry lobbyists. “They’re very trustworthy folks. They’re honest brokers,” Greg Mesack, a lobbyist with Bartlett, Bendall & Kadesh, says.

Auerbach says he spends much of his time educating members and staff on his industry and the complex securities laws. With the recent turmoil in financial markets, the trade group has seen an uptick in queries from the Hill, ranging from questions on whether the securities markets are functioning properly to whether investors are demanding redemptions.

A graduate of the University of California at Los Angeles, Auerbach took a conventional route to K Street, joining ICI after serving for five years as a staffer for Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), a member of the Financial Services Committee.

But unlike many lobbyists, he brought professional experience from the industry he now represents.

After college, Auerbach took a job doing policy research for a financial services consultancy, Federal Financial Analytics. In the days before committee hearings were broadcast over the Internet, he would attend and report on hearings affecting the industry, while going to law school at night.

That experience makes him uniquely effective, Edward J. Hill, Bank of America’s senior vice president for federal government relations, argues:  “He brings hands-on understanding of the issues.”

Auerbach also benefits from a long acquaintance with financial services policymaking, which seems to be in the family genes. His father Robert, who is now a professor at the University of Texas, was an economist for the House Banking Committee in the 1970s and again in the 1990s. This exposure to Congress through his father’s work may have deepened Auerbach’s sense of how the institution operates.

“Don has the relatively rare ability to remember what it’s like to be on the Hill, how members think, how staff thinks,” says Chuck Brain, the former congressional liaison for the Clinton White House who now counts ICI as one of his lobbying clients. “That makes a good lobbyist.”

A Democrat, Auerbach says he has strived to be bipartisan as a staffer and now as a lobbyist.

Like most trade groups, ICI has shifted its giving toward the party in power. During the last three election cycles, ICI steered no more than about 58 percent of its political action committee dollars to Republicans, according to CQMoneyLine. In the current cycle, nearly 61 percent of its contributions have gone to Democrats, while 39 percent have gone to Republicans.

With Democrats now in charge on Capitol Hill, the mutual fund industry has come under more scrutiny. There have been four hearings on 401(k) fee disclosure this year, following a government report last year that called for greater transparency.

Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), the Education and Labor Committee chairman, and Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), the chairman of a Ways and Means subcommittee, have each introduced bills that would tighten disclosure requirements for the industry.

The ICI hasn’t yet taken a stance on the legislation, and Auerbach says his organization is still working with staff and lawmakers on the issue. The ICI supports “simple, straightforward disclosure” that is “consistent across products.”

“The one thing that we would oppose is putting in statute anything that favors one business model over the other,” he said.

Auerbach seems unperturbed by the heightened interest lawmakers are paying to his industry, arguing that the scrutiny is warranted because of mutual funds’ status as a top retail investment vehicle.

“There’s going to be scrutiny of mutual funds as long as we’re around given the enormous responsibility the industry owes to American investors,” he said.