The perceived lack of asset stickiness that comes with not having a fiduciary relationship with customers is one reason why LPL was able to pay just $325 million up front on National Planning Holdings’ $120 billion in assets, a company executive who spoke on the condition of anonymity told Financial Advisor Magazine.

In fact, the firm said in an announcement that it saw this deal as an acquisition of assets—a telling remark regarding the worth of National’s 3,200 reps’ businesses.  The discount also allowed LPL to make its offer contingent upon the successful transfer of the majority of the firm’s assets. If less than 72 percent of National’s business moves to LPL by the first half of 2018, LPL will not be required to make a second payment of $123 million.

It’s worth asking: does consumer distrust translate into less profit for practitioners who fail to embrace fiduciary standards?

It is getting harder to argue that lack of trust over the dearth of a fiduciary standard for brokers doesn’t come with price tag, when survey after survey shows consumers—from Next Gens and Baby Boomers to retirees and AARP members—would work with a financial consultant if they believed they could trust one. In the meantime, many investors are staying on the sidelines.

Investors’ desire to see a fiduciary duty mandated for all financial consultants is resounding. While brokers may present themselves as “trusted advisors” in sales meetings and advertisements, they quickly become “just a lowly sales person” when confronted with arbitration, Phyllis C. Borzi, the architect of the Department of Labor’s fiduciary rule governing retirement accounts, said at the TD Waterhouse summit.

Consumers are starting to catch on. Nearly nine in 10 retirement account holders told the AARP that “it is important that professional financial advisors give advice that is in the best interest of their clients,” according to a recent study. Moreover, more than 90 percent “agree with the Department of Labor’s rule that requires professional financial advice to be in a client’s best interest,” the AARP survey found.

Some regulators echo the AARP findings and the potential value of aligning a financial practice with a client’s best interests.

“I just never understood the opponents in the industry fighting us so hard over something ultimately that would work in their favor, because I think once you establish a baseline that everyone who gives advice has to work in their client’s best interests, I can’t see any other response than more people willing to seek advice,” Borzi said.

“The AARP has data, and there is lots of data out there, that the reason people aren’t willing to seek advice for financial matters is because they don’t trust people who are giving them advice,” said Borzi, former Assistant Security of Labor of the Employee Benefits Security Administration.

“It’s very difficult to draw a line between sales and advice. I don’t want to trash another agency. I’ll leave that to others, but a lot of the confusion that has been caused is because the SEC has not aggressively monitored and enforced its own rules. In the absence of that, honestly, we could not let the consumer confusion continue,” Borzi said of the Labor Department’s creation of the fiduciary rule for retirement accounts.