Yes, in many instances the fees are as opaque or as well hidden as is the licence of the person calling himself an adviser. In the time that I've been in the business, the licence has been kept behind the back of representatives. No one in the industry wants to tell you, “I'm a salesperson.” No one wants to disclose that. They say, “I'm a wealth manager. I'm a financial adviser. I'm a retirement specialist. I'm an elder estate planning specialist”, any name in the book to prevent them from having to say to you, “I'm sorry, but I'm just a salesperson, and I don't have to place your interests first.”
The concealment applies to the fees as well. There are any number of ways to double-charge a person, triple-charge a person, churn their account so that they pay a fee today, and then move their investment six months from now and they pay another fee.
The latest and the greatest trend in the banking and financial industry is to put all investment clients on an adviser account, with advisory fees, on which they pay 1% or 2% extra on every dollar, in every client account, every day, for the rest of their lives. That would take place whether or not they even have a licensed adviser, so it's a fairly large harvest.
In 2001 RBC's numbers included $35 billion under that process—a fee every day, in every account, for every dollar.