You have seen the headlines. Wall Street firms have paid billions of dollars of fines for cheating or defrauding investors. You may have disregarded the headlines because they did not impact you. But, the headlines are not the only risks that are created by Wall Street. There are other risks and there is a 75% probability one of them is impacting you.
These risks are created by deceptive sales practices that lower quality advisors use to sell investment and insurance products. Continue reading
Did you know there are financial advisors who read the obituary columns every day and call on recently widowed women? Or, how about the advisors who call on hospice care workers to get the names of women whose husbands have suffered catastrophic illnesses. And lastly, there are the advisors who call on attorneys to obtain the names of recently divorced women.
These sales practices win the prize for sleaze. You have to wonder how these advisors sleep at night? Or, they may sleep really well because they have control of your assets. So what is really going on here and what can you do about it? Continue reading
In a recent Investor Watchdog survey we uncovered an investor belief that could badly damage their financial interests. Investors did not believe they had a right to ask their current financial advisors specific types of questions.
Investors did not ask these questions for two primary reasons. First, they consider their advisors to be friends and friends do not ask friends certain types of questions. Second, they did not believe they had to ask questions because that was the responsibility of the regulatory agencies. If something flagrant happened, the advisor would be kicked out of the financial services industry. Both of these perceptions are wrong. Continue reading
There is a one-page document that would stop Wall Street’s most deceptive sales practice in its tracks. Investors should ask for this document every time they select a new financial advisor. However, most investors don’t know what they don’t know. In this case they don’t know they can require the one-page document from advisors who want to control the investment of their assets.
What is Wall Street’s most deceptive sales practice? 75% of all so-called advisors are really sales representatives who are paid commissions to sell investment products. However, they are not required to disclose this fact to investors. They claim to be financial planners, financial consultants, and even financial advisors to camouflage their actual role of sales rep. Why hide this role? Investors do not want sales reps investing their assets. Consequently, there would be increased sales resistance if they knew the truth. Continue reading
More financial advisors are leaving big Wall Street wirehouses to go to smaller firms or start their own firms. They have a number of reasons for making the change, but most say they are fed-up with continuous headlines that document company scams and deceptive sales practices. They can’t change their firms’ business practices so their only choice is to change firms.
All advisors claim they change firms so they can provide higher quality services to their clients with no conflicts of interest. This is true half of the time. The other major reason is the advisors may make more money at the new firm, a lot more money. Continue reading
The media calls them “alphabet soup”. Investor Watchdog’s record is reviewing the credentials of an advisor who had 28 letters after his name. The soup I am referring to is the letters that represent certifications, designations, and accreditations that appear after advisors’ names.
We are all familiar with the well-known CPA® (Certified Public Accountant™) designation. Less well known is CFP® (Certified Financial Planner™) designation. And, even lesser known is CFA® (Chartered Financial Analyst™), a very highly regarded designation that can take three years to obtain. Continue reading
Two years ago the most important concern investors had about financial advisors was their ethics. Could investors trust advisors to provide complete and accurate information that was free of any potential conflicts of interest? Major losses in 2008 and continuous headlines documenting scams and deceptive sales practices fueled their concerns.
Now, the biggest concern is the advisors’ ability to produce competitive performance for reasonable amounts of risk and expense. This new #1 concern is also not surprising. Four years after the 2008 stock market crash, investors are still trying to win back their losses. And, performance is their principal way of getting their assets back. Continue reading
What is full transparency when you buy investment advice, recommendations, and products?
Transparency occurs when investors are provided an easy-to-read document that contains all of the facts they need to make an informed decision when they select advisors and invest their assets.
Wall Street spends millions of lobbyist dollars per year fighting transparency. Corrupt politicians who are more interested in Wall Street money than serving the interests of the American public make sure regulations favor companies and not investors.
What is Wall Street afraid of? In a nutshell, companies are afraid investors would not buy what they are selling if they knew the truth. Transparency would damage revenues and profits of companies and the bonus compensation of the executives who run the companies. Wall Street’s solution is to keep investors in the dark.
So what are they hiding?
How about financial advisors who lack experience, education and certifications? Or, advisors who have numerous investor complaints on their compliance records?
How about financial advisors who use deceptive tactics in verbal sales pitches so investors have no written record of what was said to them.
How about investment products that that have excessive expenses and poor performance?
How about “beat the market” investment products that have never beaten the market?
In January, 2012, Investor Watchdog is going to begin providing free tools that investors can use to obtain the information they need to select and monitor quality advisors who are willing to practice full disclosure. Watchdog tools will also expose advisors who withhold important information from investors.
Watchdog tools have the potential to change the game in favor of investors.
The Financial Times reported BofA Merrill Lynch plans to hire 2,000 brokers over the next 12 months. They will hire inexperienced brokers rather than pay big upfront fees for established professionals. These brokers will market investment products to BofA’s 17 million mass-affluent customers who need wealth management services.
Alois Pirker, research director at Alte Group LLC thought this was a smart strategy, “If you don’t leverage the opportunity, you might as well split (BofA and Merrill) up again.”
I have a different take. BofA has developed a relationship with its customers delivering traditional bank services and not investment services. Now it wants to generate more revenue from these relationships – Mr. Pirker called it “leverage the opportunity.”
Leveraging relationships is good for BofA and bad for its customers when it adds 2,000 newly minted brokers to sell bank, investment, and insurance products. In my opinion, these brokers should come with the following warning label: “I am a brand new broker. I don’t know how to help you achieve your financial goals. But, I have been trained to sell you bank products.” This is not wealth management; this is product sales disguised as wealth management.
This is a common bank strategy. Build trust with traditional bank services and then use the trust to sell investment and insurance products. BofA customers beware. Make sure you ask brokers for documentation that describes their experience and other sources of investment expertise before you buy what they are selling.