You really can put a dollar figure on investor trust.

That’s a lesson some brokers are learning the hard way when their businesses sell for significantly less than the investment advisor firm down the street. In several particularly newsworthy transactions this year, brokers netted less than half of what similar advisors have commanded—in part, experts say, because brokers aren’t governed by fiduciary rules that require them to put their clients’ best interests first.

Brokers’ sales prices are slipping. Case in point: LPL Financial’s recent acquisition of National Planning Holdings, a deal which paid the indie broker-dealer significantly less than 1x its one-year revenues. That is half or even less than the sales prices advisor firms are commanding, said Michael E. Kitces, a national consultant and co-founder of XY Planning Network, which provides technology, compliance and training for 535 independent advisors.

“When LPL bought out National Planning, they got paid 70% of one year’s revenue and that’s only on a contingency deal [that hinges on 72% of assets being transferred to LPL],” Kitces told advisors, regulators and advocates at TD Waterhouse’s Advocacy Leadership Summit in Washington, D.C. on Friday.

On average, brokers’ books of business are trading at 1x revenues compared to advisor firms, which are fetching 1.5x to 2.5x revenues, Kitces said.

One reason for that is because investment advisors have a long track record of putting client interests first as a result of the fiduciary duty made explicit in the Investment Adviser Act of 1940.

Brokers have no such history. The U.S. Department of Labor law requiring brokers to put clients’ best interests first only applies only to retirement accounts. The rule went into effect in part in January, but several important parts of the rule may be delayed until January 2019 as a result of a DOL delay request.

The brokerage industry has fought a fiduciary rule for years. The Securities and Exchange Commission, which says it will now work to create a best interest standard, has failed for more than seven years to do so for brokers.

As a result, brokers’ customer assets—gathered mainly through commission-based sales—have long been perceived to be less sticky or loyal, thus less valuable, than the fee-based asset accounts of advisors, for which clients pay recurring fees.

There are a number of variables that go into valuing a firm, but “the future is fiduciary. It’s global. Embrace it. It’s more valuable anyway,” Kitces said.

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.

The first two prongs of the DOL’s fiduciary rule governing retirement accounts—the first of its kinds for brokers—went into effect June 9. But the DOL has sent the Office of Management and Budget a request for an 18-month delay of the rule due to an outpouring of broker-dealer objection and the request for an economic impact study by President Trump.

“We will have to see what the rule says when the OMB publishes it,” Borzi said. “The industry strategy is to delay as long as possible and get the industry to issue a faux best interest standard and then to get the DOL to water down or defer compliance.”

While the industry is suing to block the DOL’s rule, and a court ruling is expected by mid-December on that lawsuit, Borzi and other consumer watchdogs such as the Consumer Federation of America, have said they have seen no new evidence to suggest the rule hurts small business retirement plans, small investors or broker-dealers.

These are “really just recycled, old studies” that were already included in earlier industry comments, said Borzi, who predicts that, despite challenges and delays, there will be an industry-wide fiduciary rule.

“There is this global movement to do this,” Borzi said. “I don’t think there is any turning back.”