The average fee that brokerage firms charge customers for a managed account — or an account that includes a mix of investments like mutual funds — is 2.02 percent, according to Cerulli Associates, an asset management research firm. That includes a 1.1 percent management fee, while the remainder is for the underlying investments. Accounts with cheaper underlying investments like exchange-traded funds will cost slightly less, though that data wasn’t available. (The proprietary JPMorgan portfolio charged an annual fee of as much as 1.6 percent, plus the cost of the investments.)

Independent financial planners typically include an annual charge of 0.85 percent to 1.15 percent of your money, according to Cerulli, plus the investment costs. Alternatively, you can seek out a planner who will charge either a flat fee or by the hour. But the biggest difference between a broker and a financial planner is that the planner’s fee, more often than not, will include a holistic financial checkup — a detailed analysis of where your money goes, how to approach paying down debts, how much life insurance to buy and how to set up a saving and investment plan to reach your goals, whether that includes saving for a down payment on a house, college or your retirement. They’ll also go over your estate plan, among other things.

Brokers, on the other hand, may work for firms that encourage the kind of training that would allow them to offer similar advice, but you have to ask yourself if they will be willing to spend the time with you if they get paid only after they make a sale, particularly if that portfolio isn’t worth millions of dollars. On top of that, many brokers’ training is quite limited. (Only about 17 percent of the advisers at brokerage firms are certified financial planners, according to Cerulli.) “ ‘How much do I need to have to retire?’ is the sole focus of the majority of these investment planners,” said Scott Smith, an associate director at Cerulli, though he added that many larger firms had professionals on hand with broader experience if you requested that kind of help.

Then, there’s the matter of investment costs. If you believe that you are better served investing in a diversified mix of low-cost index funds that are free of hidden charges, then you can look beyond a bank or brokerage firm’s offerings. Indeed, a diversified mix of three Vanguard index funds appropriate for retirees, for instance, costs only about 0.21 percent of your assets, or less than 0.10 if you want to invest in the exchange-traded fund shares, according to the firm. “If you were to call up Merrill, can you get them to sell you and put you into a no-load Vanguard fund?” said John C. Coffee Jr., a professor of securities law at Columbia Law School. “My guess is you cannot. But that is where I would tell my mother to put a good portion of her money, and whether it is Vanguard or Fidelity or someone else, I don’t care.”

Still, the biggest danger right now, experts say, goes back to the fact that most consumers don’t know who they are dealing with when they sit down with a broker. “The greatest risk the average investor runs is the risk of being misled into thinking that the broker is acting in the best interest of the client, as opposed to acting in the firm’s interest,” Professor Laby said.

Imposing a higher standard will go a long way to solving a large part of the problem, experts said, but it won’t necessarily eradicate it. “I do not believe a fiduciary standard would be a panacea by any means,” Professor Laby added. “It would, however, raise the industry standard, requiring the larger firms with good compliance programs to think very carefully about whether their brokers’ recommendations could be defended in court, or before the S.E.C., as consistent with a fiduciary standard.”