You know setting aside money for retirement is smart, but you don’t know anything about how it works. You need advice. Where do you turn? 
 
 Maybe you have a financially savvy friend or family member. But a lot of people turn to professional advisers. 
 
 Until now there have been two different kinds of investment advisers: those who are required to work in your best interests, and those who — amazingly — are not. 
 
 But a new rule from the Department of Labor, which becomes final today, aims to change that. Under the new rule, savers will gain the right to sue or initiate arbitration against advisers who don’t meet high ethical standards or who fail to disclose conflicts. 
 
 The effect, say both experts and many industry advocates, will be to drive many advisers to change their business models, while pushing others entirely out of the business. 
 
 And that’s probably a good thing. 
 
 The new rule will require retirement advisers to act in their clients’ interests 
 
 The Department of Labor developed the new standards over the past few years, as part of a larger regulatory effort to reduce risk for middle-class savers after the 2008 financial crisis. 
 
 The two kinds of retirement savings pros are called "registered investment advisers" and "broker-dealers." Registered advisers — who often work with wealthier, more sophisticated clients — are required to uphold fiduciary standards, a special legal arrangement most often associated with lawyers and doctors. They are required to work in the best interests of their clients and can be punished for doing otherwise. Registered advisers are paid directly by their clients, and generally charge based on the size of the fund they manage. 
 
 "Broker-dealers," on the other hand, are often more like salespeople (a dealer is a broker who works independently). They’re often paid commissions, increasing their incentive to suggest products with higher fees. Many also receive "revenue-sharing" payments from the banks and mutual funds that generate the investments the brokers sell, again potentially influencing them to steer savers toward products that charge more. 
 
 The suggestions broker-dealers make to clients are held to a "suitability standard." That is, brokers are required to only propose products that are appropriate for the saver given his or her age, retirement goals, etc. 
 
 "I've never met anyone who's going to go to a dealership to ask advice about whether to buy a new car" 
 
 What brokers dole out is "advice" in the conventional sense, but the current rules don’t require it to be particularly good, or even fully well-meaning. 
 
 "A sales pitch where they're going to get a huge commission isn't ‘advice,’" says Betsey Stevenson, a professor of economics and public policy at the University of Michigan and a former member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) who co-authored its report on the rule. 
 
 "Car salesmen get commissions, and everyone’s fine with that," she adds. "But I've never met anyone who's going to go to a dealership to ask advice about whether to buy a new car or take the bus." 
 
 Savers lose a lot of money because of conflicted advice 
 
 A decades-long shift from traditional pensions to 401(k) savings plans means more people than ever are responsible for deciding where to invest their own retirement savings. 
 
 The CEA’s report, published in February 2015, found that bad advice from conflicted broker-dealers reduced savers’ returns by about 1 percent a year — as much as $17 billion a year nationwide. 
 
 The greatest losses occur when workers roll their 401(k) balance into a higher-fee individual retirement account when leaving a job, rather than keeping it with their former employers. 
 
 "A typical worker who receives conflicted advice when rolling over a 401(k) balance to an IRA at age 45 will lose an estimated 17 percent from her account by age 65," the CEA’s report said. The report adds that if there is $100,000 in that account, it could grow to $216,000 in 20 years without the bad advice, as opposed to $179,000 with the conflict of interest. 
 
 Opponents say conflicts of interest aren't a problem 
 
 Opponents of the new rules argue that most brokers already act the way regulators want them to. 
 
 "If you don’t help someone, they’re not going to continue with you as a client," said Lisa Bleier, managing director at the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, an industry group, in a December interview. 
 
 Bleier said the Labor Department’s proposed rules were haphazard, applying only to retirement advisers and not to investment advisers generally. They’d require savers to sign extra contracts, including one the moment they walk in the door, she said, and would expose brokers to frivolous lawsuits. 
 
 Stevenson argues that most savers would be fine with so-called "robo advice" from online services 
 
 I pressed Bleier on the ethical issues involved in advisers receiving commissions or revenue-sharing arrangements. "I don’t see those compensation structures as a problem, no," Bleier responded. "The SEC has approved them." 
 
 The new rule will probably drive a lot of advisers out of the business 
 
 Both Stevenson, the professor and former Obama administration economist, and Bleier agree on one likely effect of the rules: A lot of brokers will stop serving middle-class clients. 
 
 Broker-dealers will have three options: 
 
 They can operate as they do now, but adhere to the new standards. Because it’ll be harder to steer clients toward high-fee products, they’ll make lower commissions — while still risking lawsuits from disgruntled clients. 
 
 They could move away from commissions, charging the client a fixed fee the way registered advisers do. 
 
 They could give up advising entirely. 
 
 In late 2012, the UK passed a set of regulations that were similar to the Obama proposal — but stronger. The regulations not only imposed a fiduciary standard on retirement brokers, but also banned nearly all commissions, while also strengthening disclosure and professional training requirements. 
 
 The result: The number of advisers in the UK fell from about 27,080 in 2009 to 23,640 in 2014, a reduction of about 13 percent, according to the Association of Professional Financial Advisers. 
 
 The revenue generated by advisers was impacted as well. Advisers’ total income never fell, but it stopped growing for three years, from 2011 to 2013. But growth resumed in 2014 with a surge of fee-based income replacing a very large drop in commissions. (Outside factors like the eurozone debt crisis likely influenced advisers’ revenue, as well.) 
 
 In the years since the new rules went into effect, both government and industry have expressed concern about a growing "advice gap" for middle- and lower-income retirement savers. While regulators have said it's difficult to measure the gap — measuring something customers aren’t doing — a research firm called Fundscape found, based on survey data, that many advisers were turning away investors who had less than about $148,000 in total assets. The average British investor has a portfolio of about $30,000. 
 
 Bleier and Stevenson both believe something similar will happen here in the United States — less wealthy clients simply can’t afford the upfront fees charged by non-conflicted investment advisers. But while Bleier sees that as a big problem, Stevenson disagrees. 
 
 Stevenson argues that most savers would be fine with so-called robo advice from online services that use data and algorithms to offer advice based on savers' specifications. Another option: They can read the Vox guide to retirement savings. 
 
 "It’s not about good guys and bad guys," said Stevenson. "These guys are just trying to feed their families. And if they can offer a product where they get a $500 commission versus one where they get an $800 commission — they don’t want to give bad advice, but what if it’s hard to tell?" 
 
 With the fiduciary rule, the government aims to resolve that tension and legally obligate advisers to put aside their self-interest. The result for savers, though, won’t necessarily be better advice. It could be less advice, at least of the kind you get from human beings. 
 
 But that’s okay. Most people don’t need much advice, because the principles of saving for retirement aren’t complicated: Save 20 percent of your income, invest in low-cost index funds, and don’t touch the money until you reach your retirement age. ||||| Arthur Levitt Jr. is a former chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and a director of Bloomberg LP. 
 
 Ronald Reagan used to say that the surest way to live forever was to become a federal program. If that’s right, the surest way to die is to be studied by Congress. In Washington, becoming the subject of legislative scrutiny virtually guarantees inaction, the disappearance of funding and political support, and ultimate demise. 
 
 That’s precisely why congressional Republicans are insisting on the need to “study” further an Obama administration proposal to make financial advisers more accountable. The proposal in question, put forward by the Department of Labor, would target the conflicts of interest that can arise when advisers attempt to steer their clients into high-fee, high-risk investments. 
 
 The Labor Department is attempting to update the fiduciary standard, raising the bar for any advice given by brokers working with retirement investors. If instituted, financial advisers will have to place a client’s interests above their own or those of their firm. That doesn’t seem like too hard a standard to meet, but not all advisers deliver on it. And to this point, nothing in the law has made them do so. 
 
 A change is long overdue. The current proposal has already been studied at length, while the public and affected industries have had their chance to examine the rule, comment on it and suggest changes. Labor Department researchers estimate that the regulation would save more than $40 billion over 10 years in retirement savings. 
 
 Republicans and some Democrats in Congress would apparently rather leave America’s investing public exposed to advisers who serve themselves first and their clients second. But rather than put forward their own ideas to address this problem, they’re attempting to dictate new parameters for the rule that would require it to be rewritten, thus running out the clock before President Barack Obama leaves office. 
 
 As a former broker, I cannot accept the argument that brokers are simply order-takers rather than advisers. Responding to customers’ directions and anxieties invariably involves a dialogue that veers into the area of advice and counsel. 
 
 As chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission in the 1990s, I’m also intimately familiar with the tactic of “study to kill.” Then, too, the Republicans in control of Congress used the maneuver to stymie important new rules to protect investors. 
 
 In that case, I wanted to keep audit and accounting firms from selling consulting and other high-margin services to their audit clients. My fear was that the audit process -- which is dependent on independence and objectivity -- would be infected by concerns over losing other client work. An audit might be toned down in hopes of winning a lucrative consulting gig from the same client. Or auditors might not share important information with an audit committee so as not to embarrass managers critical to their success on other projects. The risk of self-dealing appeared to be great. 
 
 My fears were well-placed. Major audit firms were later discovered to have allowed such conflicts of interest to affect their judgment; the resulting audits were not of consistently high quality. By the time the proposed rules had finally found their way into law in the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation, it was too late and investors had lost billions of dollars in the 2001-2002 market meltdown and recession. 
 
 Congress is in danger of repeating that mistake. The Labor Department has put forward a proposal after years of vetting, held four days of public hearings and considered comments from thousands of people. There’s no reason to study the issue further, nor any legitimate argument against the proposal itself. A vote to delay the rule further is a vote to kill the rule -- that’s how things work in Washington. 
 
 Among America’s middle-class families, who are struggling to save enough for college and retirement and life’s other big-ticket items, this delay is going to cost money. Billions of dollars in fees will be paid to unscrupulous advisers who aren’t being held to account. I’ve seen this movie before: In the end, whose money matters more: investors' or that belonging to the people they’ve trusted for advice? 
 
 This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. 
 
 To contact the author of this story: 
 
 Arthur Levitt JR at alevitt@bloomberg.net 
 
 To contact the editor responsible for this story: 
 
 Nisid Hajari at nhajari@bloomberg.net ||||| Who did the most to improve the financial lives of Americans this year? After two moths spent poring over some 75 nominations from readers, experts, and staffers, the answers became clear. MONEY picked John Oliver as 2016's most influential and informative (and funny!) financial crusader -- the man who managed to put a comedic spin on the wage gap, predatory lending, the fiduciary standard, and other complex topics. And then we went even further, identifying about a dozen other innovative people, products, and ideas that changed your money life for the better -- perhaps forever. Read on to see the individual financial heroes, and the game-changing products, services, and movements, that shook our world in 2016. 
 
 Photograph by Chris Goodney/Bloomberg via Getty Images Brad Katsuyama Invented a fairer stock market. If Brad Katsuyama gets his way, it will no longer be possible for a handful of professional investors to get an early peek at the trading of other market players. They won’t be able to jump in and fill orders at less-than-perfect prices -- and pocket the difference. His brainchild is a new stock exchange called the Investors Exchange, or IEX. If it succeeds, IEX will be a less expensive way for large traders like mutual funds to buy and sell stocks on behalf of ordinary investors. “Cheaper trades boost investment returns,” explains Joe Brennan, head of the equity index group at fund giant Vanguard, which has been complaining about high-speed trading abuses for years. At issue is so-called high-frequency trading, a strategy that uses powerful computers to rapidly buy and sell stocks, often looking to gain advantage over competitors by mere fractions of a second. Katsuyama’s IEX battles back by slowing down trading by 350-millionths of a second—a “speed bump” so small that humans don’t notice, but that eliminates high-frequency traders’ edge. 
 
 Photograph by Jonathan Ernst/Reuters Phyllis Borzi Got us the fiduciary rule. After nearly a decade of trying, the U.S. Department of Labor finally got it done: a rule that will require financial advisers to act in their clients’ best interests when managing retirement assets—in other words, to act as fiduciaries. That rule is set to go into effect next year in large part because of Phyllis Borzi, who jump-started the campaign when she joined the department as assistant secretary of labor for employee benefits security in 2009. The fiduciary standard is aimed at financial pros who push expensive or risky investments that pay them high commissions but aren’t necessarily the best choice for their clients. They are allowed to do this under a standard that requires only that investment recommendations be “roughly suitable.” According to a 2015 White House Council of Economic Advisers report, the resulting conflicted advice costs savers, on average, 1% a year in returns, or $17 billion. The Labor Department was forced to withdraw its initial proposal in the face of fierce industry and congressional opposition, but Borzi refused to give up. She formed alliances with consumer groups, brought industry executives to the table, and convinced the White House to use its bully pulpit on the issue. “Phyllis Borzi was the linchpin,” says Barbara Roper, director of investor protection at the Consumer Federation of America. “It would not have happened without her.” 
 
 Photograph by Shayla Hunter Charles Ellis Convinced us to index. For investors, 2016 was the year of the index fund. Some $175 billion was yanked from actively managed funds, while $326 billion was stashed in passive ones. This shift came about in large part because of the ideas of investment consultant and author Charles Ellis—whose new book, The Index Revolution, sums up the case he’s been making for decades. Back in 1975, Ellis wrote an article arguing that investors would come out ahead by simply avoiding mistakes rather than seeking to beat the market. Forty years of data have proved him to be prophetic. Central to Ellis’s case is the huge impact of investment costs. “It’s easy to ignore a 1% fee if you’re earning 15% returns,” says Ellis. “But today you’re lucky to get 7%, which means a 1% fee takes nearly 15% of your returns.” In today’s world of low returns, that’s a message that has never been more urgent. 
 
 Eleanor Holmes Norton (top). Pat Jehlen (at bottom, at left in blue jacket) at the signing of the Massachusetts equal pay law. Photographs by (Holmes Norton) Paul Sancya/AP Photo; (Jehlen) Jessica Rinaldi/The Boston Globe via Getty Images Pat Jehlen and Eleanor Holmes Norton Battled the pay gap. The gender wage gap remains stubbornly persistent. But in 2016 two lawmakers made tangible progress in the slow-going battle to ensure equal pay for equal work. The first is Massachusetts State Sen. Pat Jehlen, who pushed a comprehensive equal pay law through the commonwealth’s legislature this summer. The law includes incentives for businesses to tackle gender pay imbalances and clear standards for making sure workers get “comparable pay for comparable work.” as state law has long required. But perhaps most important, the law bars Massachusetts employers from asking for an applicant’s salary history before extending a job offer. Advocates believe that prohibition will break the cycle by which one discriminatory wage leads inevitably to the next. Several states are modeling their own bills on the law, and New York City implemented a similar rule for city agencies in November. And on a national level it inspired the legendary congresswoman and equal rights leader Eleanor Holmes Norton to introduce the federal Pay Equity for All Act in the U.S. Congress in September. If passed, it would bar employers from asking about previous salaries nationwide. 
 
 Photograph by Joe Raedle/Getty Images EpiPen Parents Beat back Big Pharma. Outraged parents unleashed their fury on pharmaceutical maker Mylan this year for “unconscionable price gouging” on a product that their children literally could die without—leading to a congressional hearing, $500 million in penalties, and annual savings in the thousands. Mylan owns the EpiPen, a device that wards off life-threatening anaphylactic shock during allergic reactions. Families tend to restock EpiPens, which expire annually, during back-to-school season. It was then that many realized that their high-deductible insurance plans left them on the hook for the full retail price—over $600 per pack, up from less than $100 when Mylan acquired the product in 2007. Families need multiple packs (one each for school, home, and to carry around), so bills hit the thousands. Parents swarmed Mylan’s Facebook page, assailing the price increases, and wrote to politicians demanding action. Hundreds of thousands signed online petitions pleading for sensible pricing; allergy advocacy blogs were filled with heartbreaking personal stories. Months of bad publicity prodded Mylan into releasing coupons for bigger EpiPen discounts and launching a cheaper generic version. The uproar also led to federal probes, revealing Mylan has overcharged the Pentagon and Medicare for EpiPens to the tune of $500 million. 
 
 Photograph by Michael Hickey/Getty Images Mitch Daniels Tackled college debt. Starting this fall, the Purdue Research Foundation is paying tuition for more than 100 students—who, in return, agree to pay a portion of their future earnings. It’s the biggest program of its kind in the country. Purdue president Mitch Daniels, a two-term Republican governor of Indiana who joined the school in 2013, based his Back-a-Boiler program on an idea for income-share agreements (ISAs) proposed by economist Milton Friedman in 1955. But he’s been careful to avoid some pitfalls that sank previous ISAs; for example, he limits the term to nine years, so students aren’t doomed to a lifetime of payments. The experiment is winning bipartisan praise from education experts. And ISAs are just part of Daniels’ strategy at Purdue. He also cut room and board prices and froze tuition for in-state residents for the past three years. 
 
 Courtesy of Chase The Chase Sapphire Reserve Card So many people applied for a Sapphire Reserve card within days of its August launch that Chase literally ran out of the metallic card blanks and had to send temporary plastic ones instead. Why the stampede? The rewards are far better than any other card: three points per dollar spent on restaurants and travel, one point on everything else, and a 100,000-point sign-up bonus if users spend $4,000 within three months. Even the hefty $450 annual fee is mitigated by $300 worth of credits. But perks only partly explain the card’s blockbuster appeal: Customers flooded social media with “unboxing” videos of opening their cards for the first time. Hoping to inspire similar passion, Citi and AmEx boosted their sign-up bonuses and point structures. The Reward Wars rage on. 
 
 (c) Tony Garcia Vanguard Personal Advisor Services So-called robo-advisors—algorithms that pick investments based on your financial goals and risk tolerance—are all the rage, providing new competition for traditional (that is, human) financial planners. Fund giant Vanguard has steered a middle path. Its Personal Advisor Services—open to investors with $50,000—pairs computer-driven investing with an advisor you talk to over the phone. It grew into a juggernaut in 2016, reaching $46 billion in assets under management. It’s not hard to see why. At 0.3% of assets per year, fees are competitive with fully automated options. “Now someone with less than $100,000 can get the advice someone with millions would have gotten in the past,” says financial blogger and money manager Wesley Gray. 
 
 Getty Images ABLE Accounts New state-level tax-advantaged savings plans aim to fix a longstanding problem: that disabled Americans are more likely to live in poverty and less likely to save for retirement than others. The programs, new in 2016 but made possible by the 2014 ABLE Act, allow anyone diagnosed with a disability before age 26 to save up to $14,000 a year without losing out on Medicaid and Supplemental Security Income benefits. Michigan, Nebraska, Ohio, and Tennessee offer plans that are available nationally. 
 
 Photographs by Kristoffer Tripplaar / Alamy Stock Photo Index Fund Wars Here’s one fund company’s marketing ploy we can get behind: In October, ETF giant BlackRock slashed fees on 15 of its most popular funds, including iShares Core S&P 500, from 0.07% to 0.04%. Less than a week later, Schwab responded by slashing fees on five of its own ETFs, including one of its core bond options. Fidelity and Vanguard have also attracted attention with their own cuts, announced in June and December 2015. The fee cuts won’t save investors a ton of money; and of course, fund companies love the free publicity they’re getting for it. But investors are coming out winners in the long run, says Tom Roseen, head of research services at fund analyst Lipper: “It puts pressure on the whole industry to keep costs in check.” 
 
 (c) Tony Garcia Consumer Financial Protection Bureau The five-year-old Consumer Financial Protection Bureau hit its stride in 2016. Among the actions taken this year: In May, it proposed rules to limit mandatory arbitration clauses—contractual fine print that financial firms use to deprive disgruntled (and even defrauded) customers of their day in court. In June, it proposed rules to keep payday lenders—who make short-term loans at sky-high interest rates—from lending "without reasonably determining that the consumer has the ability to repay." In July, it proposed rules to limit how often debt collectors can contact consumers—and require them to get the details right. In September, it launched a massive enforcement action against Wells Fargo , which paid $100 million for opening some 2 million accounts without customer knowledge. And in October, the CFPB finalized rules that extend credit card protections to prepaid cards and payment apps like Venmo.
– Americans trying to save for retirement might be pleased to learn that a new law expected next year will require something that sounds obvious: All financial advisers will be required to work in their clients' best interests. As Vox explains, that is "amazingly" not the case now. Two kinds of advisers currently exist: "Registered investment advisers," who tend to work with the wealthy, are held to high fiduciary standards akin to the standards of doctors and lawyers, and they must indeed work in the best interests of their clients. But the other group, "broker-dealers," are more like salespeople who work on commissions. They're required only to provide "suitable" advice, and there's nothing stopping them from steering their middle-class clients into high-fee products that result in fat commissions for themselves. The Obama administration has been trying to tighten the law—to ensure that all advisers put their clients' interests above their own or their company's—and the spending bill that cleared Congress last week all but ensures it will happen. The financial industry had mounted a "last-minute battle" to kill the provision, but it fell short, reports the Wall Street Journal. As a result, the Labor Department is expected to draft the legislation in January ahead of its implementation later in the year. Proponents say that it will save people big money in their IRAs and 401(k)s, while the industry argues that it will drive many brokers out of business and thus put the price of getting investment advice out of reach for many. At Bloomberg View, meanwhile, former broker and SEC chief Arthur Levitt argues that the change is "long overdue."