One of President Barack Obama’s top economic advisers said abusive trading practices are costing workers billions of dollars in retirement savings each year and called for stricter rules on the brokers.

Jason Furman, chairman of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, drafted a Jan. 13 memo indicating the White House may support tighter oversight of brokers who handle retirement accounts. The document, obtained by Bloomberg News, was circulated to senior White House aides.

The memo makes the case for a Labor Department regulation that would impose a fiduciary duty on brokers handling retirement accounts, requiring them to act in their clients’ best interest. Under current rules, brokers are held to a ‘suitability’ standard, meaning they must reasonably believe their recommendation is right for a customer.

“Consumer protections for investment advice in the retail and small-plan markets are inadequate,” Furman wrote in the memo, also signed by Betsey Stevenson, another member of the economic council. “The current regulatory environment creates perverse incentives that ultimately cost savers billions of dollars a year.”

Wall Street has spent more than four years successfully lobbying against the Labor rule. Led by firms like Morgan Stanley and Bank of America Corp., the industry has argued that costlier regulations would take away options for smaller investors, who would lose access to advice as well as investment choices.

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