Lately, a lot of attention has been placed on proposed changes to how mutual fund companies charge their clients through expense fees. At this particular moment in time, investors pay a relatively low management fee when they own no-load investment funds. From those fees, the fund company is compensated as is the individual adviser, including the no-transaction fee firms like Charles Schwab.

Under the proposed changes, one key recommendation will limit the amount of fees that the fund company can collect to a "lesser of" factor. The lesser of is actually 6.25% or the maximum charged on a loaded fund. For example, consider a fund that has a front-end version as well as a no-fee version. If the front-end fee is 5% and the no-fee expense ratio is 1%, the maximum the company could collect on that fund is 5%, or 5 years worth of expenses.

The question becomes what happens after 5 years? Well, the fund would still be able to collect up to 0.25% of fund assets to account for administrative-type of expenses. But what about the adviser? He will either a big drop in pay (no more trailer fees) or will recommend changing to another fund so that he can get paid again. Or, most likely, will do away with collecting trailer fees at all, sell you the higher-priced (up front) front-end fund and charge you a management fee for all of the assets you have with him.

But management fees at the adviser level also poses a problem because how advisers will target only the most affluent, leaving folks who need the advice most on their own with no advice or recommendations at all.

Not a very rosy picture -- either bad advice because churning (when you move from one investment to another simply for the sake of earning a commission) will become rampant among financial advisers or individuals who fall short of investment minimums will be shut out of the advice-intensive industry altogether (of course, the Schwabs will still be around).

Perhaps taking a closer look at transparency rather than the fees themselves would make the most sense for the SEC and the individual investors alike. After all, sometimes it is not so bad to have to pay a fee for any kind of service when we know what we are paying and how much the person making recommendations is earning, not like today's fees where we know we are paying something, someone is getting rich, and we know nothing about what our advisor is really earning.