Dark Side of Financial Services

Avoid allowing the firm that has custody of your assets to also give you advice.

Consumers often presume that an advisor associated with a large commission-based brokerage firm will have a team of managers supervising their advisor. This is a misconception.

As fiduciaries, we are on your side to ensure that your goals are met. Protecting you from elder fraud is just one of the many services we can offer as a part of comprehensive financial planning.

They admit that they do not rebalance, have been subject to lawsuits claiming they are predatory, and are held to a relaxed standard designed specifically for them.

That is not what anyone means by the term “rebalancing.” The misuse of the term on Investment News was glaring.

At stake is if the SEC is allowed to redefine what the phrase “best interest” means to make it mean something less than your actual real-world best interests.

Already the COVID-19 predictions have started to come in. Do not be deceived by them. Do not be afraid of them.

We would suggest not listening to Dent’s commentary.

If you weren’t spending your money on useless treatment, you could enrich your life in other ways, retire earlier, or be richer.

There is an incentive to lie when your methodology is bad.

In all fields, the best methodologies are boring.

Even if all four of these sentimental or pragmatic justifications are true, doing the wrong thing is still worse than doing nothing.

“It is, of course, hard to get people in any profession to do the right thing when they’re paid to do the wrong thing.”

This pitch is made by Bill Shaw of Stansberry Research, the same group that brought you the perennial “Reclusive Millionaire Warns” spam article. Don’t be gullible.

There are at least seven major mistakes in this advice by Wells Fargo Asset Management.

Nice is different from good. You want a good financial planner not just a nice one.

Understanding the most powerful sales techniques doesn’t change the fact that they tend to work.

I cannot imagine any consumer who, if they understood how such a select list of advisers was actually compiled, would use this list. Why limit yourself only to firms willing to pay a referral service to endorse them?

Be on your guard to avoid wasting money following the advice of an article written to maximize revenue.

These are four possible consequences of Regulation Best Interest.

The SEC is allowing financial professionals to hide in a lower legal requirement, not meet a fiduciary standard, and call it “Best Interest.”

It requires discipline to ignore dire warnings.

On June 5th, 2019, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) released their final draft of Reg BI, or “Best Interest” as it is called.

Rumors suggest that the network’s vetting is a five minute process where you are told the fees are about $1,000 a month.

The title is “Reclusive Millionaire Warns: ‘Get Out of Cash Now.’ ” Assuming you take the bait, the article and accompanying video uses all the psychological tricks. It takes a long time before what they are selling is revealed.

Cross-Selling is when a financial institution incentivizes their employees to sell or recommend financial products and services that increase the financial institution’s profits. The practice is as commonplace as it is fraught with conflicts of interest.

SEC announced that 79 investment adviser firms will return more than $125 million to clients after self-reporting violations of the Advisers Act.

The expense ratio charged by your funds matters more than you may realize.

Disclosures are always necessary but rarely sufficient to fulfill fiduciary obligations.

If you own these fund families with your Ameriprise Advisor, perhaps you should consider switching to a fee-only financial advisor.

Brokers tell investors they’re trusted advisors, and then tell the courts they’re just sales people.

In addition to all of the other reasons people hate annuities, seemingly fraudulent advertising and sales techniques is a major factor.

This is called “regulatory capture” and is quite common in government regulatory agencies such as the SEC.

Ameriprise was fined $4.5 million for failing to appropriately supervise representatives who were stealing client funds.

Are you consenting to harmful conduct by your financial advisor?

That the program failed is not a surprise. That the government decided to close a failed program, however, is.

If you are one of those consumers for whom the word “annuity” is enough to make them tune out a sales presentation, congratulations! You have have probably correctly understood the real challenges these products face.

As you read other financial advice sites, be wary of the sponsored content.

It will help you in life if you can learn to distinguish between content with ulterior motives and real financial planning wisdom.

The majority of the industry many not even believe that there is a better way. But you deserve better.

Incentives matter. If you are going to get a financial advisor, you need to select a fee-only advisor because you need to find an advisor you can trust.

We find the practices of much of the financial services industry repulsive.

Another free pass for the agents of brokers-dealers to dissembling under the guise of “Regulation Best Interest.”

We were surprised by our survey of the registered firms in the Charlottesville area.

You should not trust a point in time fiduciary for even a single heart beat.

We, the shareholders, do not like being treated this way.

The SEC released an embarrassingly poor 1,000 page document.

In 2007 the Financial Planning Association won a lawsuit that it filed against the SEC to force them to enforce the registration provisions of the 1940 Investment Advisors Act. The law still isn’t enforced.

“One principal purpose of the accredited investor concept is to identify persons who can bear the economic risk of investing in these unregistered securities.”

Unfortunately, no amount of rules-based compliance can force a company to follow the principles-based fiduciary standard.