So it shouldn’t come as a surprise to discover the new regulation passed on a party-line vote by the Republican-dominated Securities and Exchange Commission isn’t what it claims to be. The guidance, known as “Regulation Best Interest,” claims to improve individual investor protections. On first pass, it sounds similar to an Obama-era Labor Department initiative which was later ditched under President Trump. That rule demanded financial advisers giving advice on retirement savings put the best interests of their clients ahead of their own. But, as it turns out, the SEC regulation, which impacts brokers advising on brokerage accounts, is less stringent.

“It’s best interest in name only,” says Micah Hauptman, the financial services counsel at the Consumer Federation of America. “It doesn’t actually require brokers to act in clients’ best interests.” Robert J. Jackson Jr., the lone Democrat serving on the SEC and the only commissioner to vote against the new standard, said in a statement: “When American investors planning their financial futures seek help from investment professionals, do those professionals have to put investor interests first? Today the Commission answers, ‘no.’”

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Let’s be clear: In some ways, the regulation is an improvement. It requires more disclosure of how a broker is paid and any conflicts of interest. But consumer and financial activists — not to mention dissenting commissioner Jackson — point out the new rule doesn’t precisely define best interest. And revealing and mitigating conflicts of interest is a far cry from eliminating them entirely: Studies show that disclosure is less effective than it sounds, and often doesn’t alter consumer behavior. In fact, many think disclosure means the person giving the guidance won’t steer them wrong. Nor does the regulation crack down hard enough on the alphabet soup of titles financial professionals can claim, many of which can sound important, but often serve to confer an authority that might or might not be warranted.

Taken all together, it’s likely financial services firms and individual brokers will be able to wiggle around this supposedly enhanced standard. Surveys, polls and focus groups repeatedly show that many Americans believe anyone they go to for financial advice needs to act as if they took a Hippocratic oath for portfolios. Unfortunately, this is often not the case. The reason this is so important? Billions of dollars are at stake — for investors on one hand and the financial services industry on the other. Conflicted advice costs savers money — the Obama administration estimated $17 billion annually on retirement accounts alone.