Many retirement accounts that took a hit in the Great Recession are back on track, but those dark days left a lingering, hard-to-erase legacy: an erosion of the trust that investors had placed in their financial advisors.

The problem – aggravated by scandals involving rogue trading, rate manipulation and insider trading – crops up every time there's a financial meltdown. This time, it appears especially pronounced among middle and lower-income workers who tell surveyors they simply do not believe their financial advisors are working with their best interest in mind.

The latest CFA Institute/Edelman Investor Trust Study found only half (53 percent) of investors trust investment management rms to do what is right. Worse results can be seen in the Forgotten Investor Survey, a poll of retail investors by State Street Corp., which found that financial advisers are trusted by a mere 15 percent of respondents.