Many large broker-dealers have spent significant time, money and effort adopting new sets of policies and procedures to comply with the Department of Labor’s new Fiduciary Rules, and these firms are proceeding as planned – regardless of the fact that the DOL will now delay the implementation date, if not trash the rules altogether. This is true of Merrill Lynch, which expects most of its policy changes to remain no matter what.

This has prompted a growing number of Merrill Lynch brokers to jump to rival firms that continue of offer commission-based retirement accounts, according to advisorhub.com, including Michael Lombardi and Andrew Katchen, who left Merrill’s home-office branch in downtown Manhattan on Wednesday for Morgan Stanley. They are the 4th and 5th senior producers to leave the 255 Liberty Street branch since December. Merrill announced in October that it would be prohibiting sales of mutual funds in retirement accounts and of any commission-based products in the accounts.

While the pair not the biggest producers, each could be categorized as a Merrill ‘Lifer’ - Lombardi has been there for his entire 23-year brokerage career, and Katchen has worked his 17 years there, as well. Both were concerned about losing business due to the new policies on retirement accounts that Merrill is implementing. Lombardi was particularly vulnerable to the ban on commission-based individual retirement accounts because he has a heavily transactional book of business, a former colleague said. He was also one of a rising tide of advisors chafing over new record-keeping requirements, including the firm’s push to have them update investment goals for all clients on Salesforce software.

Simply stated, for Lombardi, Katchen and others, “It’s not their father’s Merrill Lynch anymore.”