FINRA just unveiled a redesigned website today for arbitration and mediation. It is much more user friendly, checkout the new webpage here: http://www.finra.org/arbitration-and-mediation

It’s essential for investors to make a knowledgeable decision about investing their 401(k) money in a target-date fund or in other options. Retirement-plan investors frequently aren’t sure how to distribute the money they’re putting away. So the growth of target-date funds, which automatically shift investors’ money from stocks to fixed income gradually over the years, has been widely seen as a success for the country’s retirement readiness. Experts worry that some investors who don’t fully understand these funds might take on more risk than they want. Target-date approach surprised many investors with a decline in their funds during the 2008 financial crisis.

“That experience should have served as a wake-up call for investors and the relentless growth in target-date funds is troubling because studies have shown that investors and industry professionals alike do not fully appreciate the risk these funds present,” Luis A. Aguilar, SEC member. Investors should be aware that target-date funds can have confusing names and large fees.

To evaluate a target-date fund, check the prospectus to determine the glide path, the changes in allocations over time, to make sure the fund is taking an amount of risk over the years that the investor is comfortable with. Typically, 401(k) plans offer a series of target-date funds from the same fund company, so investors who can’t find one with low fees and their preferred risk profile might prefer to do things the traditional way, to invest in the stock and bond funds their plan offers and commit to doing the rebalancing in the years ahead themselves.

http://www.ibj.com/articles/52207-merrill-lynch-abruptly-parts-ways-with-top-financial-adviser?utm_source=eight-at-8&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=2015-03-11

Our firm will be looking into investor complaints against Tom Buck and the Buck Group as a result of his termination from Merrill Lynch.

Charles Schwab is set to introduce Schwab Intelligent Portfolios a FREE investment service for consumers wanting low-cost personalized advice but with minimal money to invest. Schwab will potentially trounce the competition given its established brand name and size.

Schwab is following the lead of a few smaller firms in regards to automated investing. Wealthfront, which has collected $2 billion in customer assets over its three-year existence, largely from people under 35, and Betterment, which has collected $1.55 billion since it opened in 2010. These smaller companies provide service to people with thousands, not millions, to invest and little to spend on investment advice. A unique service that is in high demand.

Naureen Hassan, an executive vice president of Schwab, says that “Schwab wanted to create a product that would appeal to the masses and get more people into well-diversified portfolios,” she said. Although the program does not officially become available to customers until later this month, its federal regulatory filing and website contain many of its details.

The major source of criticism in the service lies within the allocation of cash recommendations and with how the portfolios are constructed. The cash allotment will often be larger than many financial advisers recommend. For more information about Schwab’s new service click here https://intelligent.schwab.com/

Legislation introduced to the House last week could stop brokers and advisers from requiring investors to take claims to arbitration rather than court. Nearly all brokerage and a large amount of advisory agreements include provisions limiting investors into arbitration.

Written by Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., the bill bans pre-dispute mandatory arbitration clauses in contracts between advisers and clients. The legislation also prohibits any restrictions on investors filing class action suits.

“Working Americans shouldn’t have to sign away their rights in order to work with a financial adviser or broker-dealer to build a secure retirement,” Mr. Ellison, a member of the House Financial Services Committee, said in a statement. “An investor’s right to recover monetary damages through legal action is critical. Working Americans will be more eager to invest their hard-earned dollars when we give them more rights in the financial marketplace.”

In 2013, Mr. Ellison submitted a similar bill. It failed to get a hearing in the House Financial Services Committee, which is controlled by Republicans. It died at the end of the congressional session last December and had to be reintroduced to the new Congress.

Republicans’ strengthened House majority and their Senate majority pose an even bigger challenge for Mr. Ellison’s legislation this time, but state regulators are not discouraged.

“State securities regulators believe that investor confidence in fair and equitable recourse is critical to the health of our securities markets and long-term investments by retail investors,” the North American Securities Administrators Association said in the legislative agenda it released Feb. 23.

The U.S. Justice Department is looking into the UBS V10 Enhanced FX Carry Strategy, a product sold to investors such as hedge funds and pension funds. Focusing on whether banks misrepresented how currency transactions were priced, authorities’ broaden their examination into manipulation in the foreign-exchange market.

The V10 product “allows an investor to potentially profit in moves in 10 of the most liquid major currencies by taking advantage of opportunities based on interest rate differentials,” according to a 2009 UBS publication.

Through interviews with UBS employees in 2013, the V10 product first arose in the Justice Department with investigators probing commissions on the product and whether the bank respected its fiduciary duties to clients. In recent weeks, the questions were raised once again as the agency pursued to secure proffer agreements.

For more information visit: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-08/ubs-currency-product-sales-targeted-by-u-s-justice-department

Oppenheimer & Co. has been charged by the SEC for violating federal securities laws while wrongly selling penny stocks in unregistered offerings on behalf of clients. Oppenheimer admitted their wrongdoing and will pay $10 million to settle the SEC’s charges, as well as another $10 million to settle a parallel action by the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.

The SEC found Oppenheimer engaged in two courses of misconduct.  The first involved aiding and abetting illegal activity by a customer and ignoring red flags that business was being conducted without and valid exemption from the broker-dealer registration requirements of the federal securities laws. Oppenheimer failed to recognize the resulting liabilities and expenses in violation of the books-and-records requirements, and improperly recorded transactions for customers in Oppenheimer’s records. Oppenheimer also failed to file Suspicious Activity Reports as mandatory under the Bank Secrecy Act to report potential misconduct and its clients, and the firm failed to properly report, withhold, and remit more than $3 million in backup withholding taxes from sales profits. .

The second course of misconduct involved Oppenheimer again engaging on behalf of another client in unregistered sales of billions of shares of penny stocks. The firm’s liability stems from its failure to react to red flags and conduct a searching inquiry into whether the sales were exempt from registration requirements of the federal securities laws, and its failure reasonably to supervise with a view toward detecting and preventing violations of the registration provisions. The SEC’s investigation, which is continuing, discovered that the sales generated approximately $12 million in profits of which Oppenheimer was paid $588,400 in commissions.

The SEC’s order is requiring Oppenheimer to stop and abstain from committing or causing any violations and any future violations of Section 15(a) and 17(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rules 17a-3 and 17a-8, and of Section 5 of the Securities Act of 1933.  In addition to the financial remedies, Oppenheimer agreed to be censured and undertake such corrective measures as retaining an independent consultant to review its policies and procedures over a five-year period.

A top economic adviser under President Obama is calling for stricter rules on Wall Street after finding some bad broker practices costing investors $8 billion to $17 billion a year.

Chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, Jason Furman, found research showing some broker practices, such as boosting commissions with excessive trading, is costing investors billions. The White House is considering tighter oversight of brokers who handle retirement accounts.

In a Jan. 13^th memo, drafted by Furman to the White House, calls for a Labor Department regulation that would impose a fiduciary duty on brokers handling retirement accounts, requiring them to act in their clients’ best interest. Under current procedures, brokers are held to a ‘suitability’ standard, meaning they must sensibly believe their recommendation is right for a customer.

Over the past four years or so, Wall Street has been lobbying against the Labor rule. Firms such as, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America Corp. have been leading the charge. Arguing that costlier regulations would take away options for smaller investors, who would lose access to advice as well as investment choices.

The Labor Department’s official proposal could come as soon as this month. It is important to note that this draft rule will not ban sales commissions and will require brokers to guard against conflicts and avoid “certain self-dealing transactions”.

For more details about the Jan. 13^th memo click here.

Just like an average person who ages, an older financial adviser is more likely to show signs of aging. Red flags that a financial adviser might be suffering from senior moments: forgetfulness, a tendency to repeat things, a disregard for following instructions. If you are concerned, bring attention to the branch manager or to compliance, or, if they don’t do anything, to the authority. An increasing problem that seems to go unreported most of the time, but in the next few decades be prepared to see these declining mental skills claims increase.

51 is the average age of financial advisers and 43 percent are older than 55, according to Cerulli Associates. Many are planning to retire in the next decade and it is a struggle to recruit young advisers to offset those retiring from the industry. The North American Securities Administrators Association are aware of the financial services industry’s continuing concerns regarding the aging of advisers and have begun addressing the issue with proposing a rule requiring state-registered investment advisers to have succession and business continuity plans in place.