When British actor John Houseman leaned into the camera at his private club, he came across like a rich uncle favoring you with life-changing wisdom. He stated the case simply as he recommended Smith Barney for investment advice: "They make money the old fashioned way. They earn it." The TV commercial became an instant classic.

But that was 1979. Beginning in the '80s investors witnessed a string of market shocks and headline grabbing scandals that undermined the presumed authority and trust in financial pros the Smith Barney ad played to.

The industry black marks include insider trading schemes, mutual funds collusion in illegal trading with hedge funds, traders manipulating the key LIBOR index, and, of course, founder and former Nasdaq chairman Bernie Madoff's spectacular Ponzi scheme. After the tech bubble burst in 2000, phony stock research (some from Smith Barney) was revealed to be floating the bubble. Add in flash crashes, gut wrenching volatility and the market meltdown of 2008, where investors saw hard-earned savings evaporate.

Topping it off, research I wrote about last year from the U's Carlson School of Management showed 44 percent of brokers found guilty of misconduct were employed in the industry within a year, tending to concentrate at certain firms. Given that list, it's little wonder the financial service industry faces a trust gap. Today much of the advertising for investment advice emphasizes trustworthiness over bragging about how smart they are.

The post-trust era is the context in which the Obama administration's Labor Department (DOL) issued its fiduciary rule seeking to align the way financial advisers operate when offering retirement investment advice and eliminating the incentive for some to recommend subpar investments. Under existing rules, advisers can recommend a mutual fund, for example, that has higher fees and expenses than an alternative fund but for which they receive a sales commission, as long as it is deemed "appropriate" to an investor's situation. Under the stalled DOL rule, "appropriate" would be replaced by a "best interest" standard where an adviser would be prohibited from making a commission-compensated recommendation unless they disclosed their compensation arrangement and the client agreed.

I've written in previous columns about how some mutual fund companies and investment advisers are responding to the DOL rule, even though implementation is up in the air. But the biggest impact may be on consumer awareness.

What used to be an arcane insiders' distinction between investment advice that is in a client's fiduciary "best interest" and advice that is "appropriate" is now a topic clients proactively raise.

Jason Kley, a Bloomington-based wealth adviser at Carlson Capital Management said that media coverage surrounding the DOL rule has increased consumer awareness about potential conflicts of interest. Kley, who is also president-elect of the Financial Planners Association of Minnesota, noted that a number of clients over the past few years sought out his firm because it explicitly acts as a fiduciary. "It's not a conversation I would have had five or 10 years ago," he said. "I love that the conversation is happening. Consumers know what they're looking for, know what questions to ask."

When St. Paul resident Don Lee visited his financial adviser earlier this year, the adviser told him he had left the financial services giant, Ameriprise, to set up his own shop in response to the DOL rule. While the adviser declined to speak with me, Don related his conversation. Several colleagues had started their independent firm the past January because they were not comfortable with Ameriprise's stance on the DOL rule, which was having them ask clients to sign agreements allowing for commission-based products. (I wrote about Ameriprise's approach in my last column where the firm said it "will continue to offer investors choice of both fee-based and commission-based accounts to meet the full range of their needs.")

Don and his wife, both friends of mine, have had a decadelong relationship with this adviser, like him and trust the advice they have received. Don is a freelance editor, writer and radio producer and his wife is an attorney. Neither consider themselves financial experts, so he said "trust is everything" in their relationship with their adviser. Don said he had heard and read enough about the fiduciary rule to raise some concerns. His adviser had discussed fees with them in the past, enhancing the feeling of trust, he reported.

But he said if he had been asked to sign a "best interest" exemption, despite the decadelong relationship, he would have said no. Perhaps investment advisers are going to have to start making money the old-fashioned way after all.

Editor's note: This is the last of four columns about the financial advice industry's response to a delayed Obama-era rule.

Brad Allen is a freelance journalist and former investor relations executive for companies including Imation Corp. and Cray Research. His e-mail is brad@bdallen.com.`