The fiduciary rule's Best Interest Contract Exemption has been delayed until July of 2019. But the spirit and intention of the rule remain in force. Anyone selling investments to a 401(k) plan is now a fiduciary, and beholden to the rule's impartial conduct standards.

Investment recommendations must be in the best interest of plan participants. And compensation for consulting and advisory services must be reasonable.

What's reasonable? The fiduciary rule doesn't say. Newly minted fiduciaries will err on the side of caution, and recommend more passive investments without revenue-sharing agreements.

3. Clean-share safe harbor

Labor has been teasing a new clean-share safe harbor for months. Clean shares of mutual funds strip advisory fees from investments and allow advisors and brokers to attach their own charges for recommending investments.

A new safe harbor would provide an alternative to the fiduciary rule's BIC Exemption, allowing proprietary and actively managed funds to be more readily recommended.

Labor has 12 months to make this prediction come true.

4. Open MEPS

Congress will revisit legislation paving the way for Open Multiple Employer Plans.

Open MEPs would allow small employers to pool employees under one consolidated 401(k) plan, and transfer fiduciary obligations from employers to service providers.

Stakeholders and retirement experts call the idea a no-brainer, and on Capitol Hill, Democrats like the idea as much as Republicans.

But 2018 will be an election year. For as divided as Congress was in 2017, the political climate can be expected to be even more toxic going forward.

Sensible retirement policy could be the victim.

5. Annuity selection safe harbor for plan sponsors

Congress will revisit legislation paving the way for an annuity selection safe harbor for plan sponsors. A new safe harbor would relieve potential liability for offering annuities in 401(k) plans.

Stakeholders and retirement experts again call the idea a no-brainer, and on Capitol Hill, Democrats again like the idea as much as Republicans.

But 2018, again, will be an election year. For as divided as Congress was in 2017, the political climate can be expected to be even more toxic going forward. Sensible retirement policy could be the victim. Again.

6. First class-action lawsuit against broker advising 401(k) plan

The Labor Department has scrapped the class-action provision of the fiduciary rule, which would have allowed IRA investors to bring group claims against service providers.

But under ERISA, plan participants can of course bring class-action claims. While sponsors and recordkeepers have been in the cross hairs for the past decade, now all brokers and advisors to 401(k) plans are fiduciaries, courtesy of the impartial conduct standards.

Chances are some of them will be sued in 2018.

7. Pass-throughs dropping 401(k) plans?

Tax relief for S-Corporation owners will call into question the value proposition behind offering 401(k) plans, or so some in industry fear.

Advisor specialists and service providers will be motivated to redouble communication efforts to small business owners.

8. Social Security reform

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, R-WI, has said Social Security reform will be advanced next year, despite President Trump's vows to leave the program alone.

But however necessary reform may be, raising it next year could amount to political suicide for Republicans. Kicking the can down the road may prove to be the safer option.

9. Relief for Teamsters, other multiemployer plan retirees

Upwards of 1.5 million retirees and participants in collectively bargained multiemployer pension plans are at risk of losing their retirement savings in the foreseeable future.

Tens of billions of dollars will be required to make them whole, according to the director of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. Democrats have introduced legislation to use taxpayer money to make the riskiest plans solvent.

Republicans in the House will have to consider the proposal—they too represent the honest workers facing destitution through no fault of their own.

But adding to the debt after tax reform built in $1.5 trillion of new obligations will be an uphill battle.

Pension advocates will make the argument that employers in the plans should commit savings from tax cuts to increase contributions to the plans.

10. Bitcoin won't be offered in your 401(k) plan

The purest Bitcoin evangelists want access to 401(k) savers. Some millennials could conceivably demand the option.

Neither cohort claims familiarity with the word "fiduciary."