Today’s “Slap in the Face” Award is a big one. It goes out to the brokerage and banking industry for its efforts to stop key provisions of the Department of Labor’s new fiduciary rule.

One of the best provisions of this new rule is that advisors can’t sell you a high- or higher-priced investment in a retirement account when a lower-cost one will do the same thing.

In other words, if a fund costing 0.5% in fees does the same thing as one that costs 1.25% in fees, they have to propose the lower-cost fund.

That new rule will eliminate many conflicts of interest between advisors and their clients, and that alone makes it worthwhile.

But the new rule also allows for a warranty, a Best Interest Contract, for any retirement product sold with a commission. The financial industry can no longer sell you an expensive investment product and be free of any liability if it fails. The contract must detail any and all fees.

Now, from my perspective, if the banks and brokerages played up these new guidelines correctly and talked up the benefits, like better transparency, more accountability and lower fees that will increase long-term returns, you wouldn’t be able to build doors wide enough to get all the new customers in.

This is a great deal for the little guy.

But, in usual Wall Street fashion, they aren’t taking the high road.

They’re trying to block the changes. They say the new rules are unfair to the banks because they’ll make it financially unfeasible (too expensive) to service small investors’ accounts.

Really? I have news for them and you.

The brokerage business never serviced small investors. Most of them took our money, dropped us in the highest-commission accounts and funds, and forgot about us before we even left the building.

And unless we called to pester them, we never heard from them again… unless they had something else to sell us.

Do they really expect anyone who knows anything about the business to believe that the new regulations, which prevent them from fleecing the little guy with the more expensive products (or the ones that benefit them), are somehow unfair to the industry?

Give me a break.

This one deserves a kick in the butt, not a slap in the face. It’s unfair to the banks?!