When financial advisors go bad - NOT seeking legal advice just logistical

In My Humble Opinion
1

The story is, naturally, long and terrible, but let me see if I can be brief: my parents have serious problems with their financial advisor. As one might expect, there are legal issues about the quality/accuracy of the advice they received, but I won’t go into that here, and I am NOT looking for legal advice. The problem I wish to address is the advisor’s contemptuous, condescending behavior. Most of it has been on the phone, but here are quotes from an e-mail she sent my mother yesterday:

“your bad behavior with me is getting tiresome, please cease.”

“If you have since changed your mind or are confused contact me and we can have a civil discussion, your accusations are unwarranted and unnecessary.”

Now, although my mother would disagree, my mother HAS been a handful. The quotes above respond to a letter from my mother which at least as irritable as those words. However, at the risk of sounding like a child, THE ADVISOR STARTED IT. I know from my own conversations with the advisor that she is arrogant and dismissive, and that understandably pushes my mother’s buttons, particularly when it is clear this advisor has seriously hurt my parents financial position through incompetence, misrepresentation about the nature of an insurance policy, and more.

Furthermore, my mother is elderly, extremely ill, and dealing with considerable stress because my father is severely ill. And for all the advisor (or anyone else knows) a bit of dementia could be setting in.

My feeling is, the advisor should be a professional and be courteous even when my mother is not. I don’t care how much of a bitch my mother is (and I do acknowledge that my mother is forthright to the point of nastiness – I’ve been dealing with it all my life, and almost NEVER lose control the way this advisor has). If the advisor feels she cannot treat my mother politely, she should disengage and offer to turn the account over to someone else.

So I want to complain. Where do I go? Obviously, to the supervisor. But can one complain to the Attorney General of the state this advisor is working from? What can I do when my complaint is “an advisor is doing her job in such a way as to cause undue stress and emotional anguish to a sick old lady. This advisor is cruel and unprofessional and there should be some sort of formal complaint lodged against her.”

Am I dreaming? Or is there something I can do? (We do not have legal authority over the accounts, although that situation is in flux – way TMI for this posting.)

2

Your argument against the financial advisor seems to resolve down to “My mother is a rude bitch, and her financial advisor is just as big a rude bitch, and they are having a bitchy disagreement, but my Mom is old and cranky and stressed so you need to punish the advisor”.

The quality of the financial advice aside, this is pretty silly position to be taking. Being old should and infirm should not give you a pass on being an asshole.

Also FWIW the written responses you are citing by the financial advisor as evidence of her huge bitchiness while terse, are not wildly unprofessional. The fact that you’ve accommodated yourself to taking verbal beatings from your mother over the years does not mean other people have to put up with it. Your expectation that that they should is simply astounding.

3

I’m not seeing anything rude here, really. I think it’s entirely professional to say “You are mistreating me, stop it.” or “You are accusing me of something I didn’t do. If you want me to explain things so that you don’t think I am ripping you off, call me.” I think Financial Advisor is actually being rather diplomatic.

4

My fault for posting badly. I am not asking, " do you think the financial advisor is rude?" Such a question would not belong in GD.

Allow me to try again:

Let’s start from the premise that the advisor IS shrill, rude, ignores what my mother tells her, berates her, and causes her unnecessary stress.

This is not against the law, but it is not professional behavior.

What recourse do I have?

5

Is the advisor independent, or part of a larger organization or brokerage organization. If they are part of a larger organization, you should complain to their branch manager and the corporate headquarters.

6

Since this question is really seaking advice, let’s move it to IMHO.

samclem GQ moderator

7

Yes, Bildo, the advisor is part of a big brokerage. I will call the HQ and ask about procedures for that. But I wonder if there is some kind of independent body/watchdog/trade association that covers financial advisors.

8

You’re trying to figure out how to deal with a rude, condescending and incompetent financial advisor? It’s the simplest thing in the world - get a new financial advisor.

Would you be asking for advice if this was a rude barber who is lousy at cutting hair? A service provider is rude to you, they don’t do their job well, pick up your stuff and go to a new provider.

What does your mom think about this? Since it’s her money, her account, her relationship, she needs to be the one complaining.

9

I work in the brokerage business, although not as an advisor.

My take is that your mother probably calls frequently, rambles, and never gets to the point. I’ve seen this with many elderly clients.

The advisor is probably saying, “Quit calling, rambling about being “ripped off” and tell me exactly where, how, and when you were ripped off.” They don’t have time in their day to take calls from people who just want to bitch about the markets or listen to their conspiracy theories.

10

If this is the case, have you considered obtaining a Power of Attorney so you can deal with your mother’s financial accounts?

I used to work in the financial markets as well, and would have to deal with calls from elderly clients who were concerned with “getting ripped off,” when actually it was just the market flucuating. These calls were always very hard, because you knew the individuals were on a fixed income and really worried about making ends meet. Also there were some people who I think were just bored and wanted to talk to someone. These calls always made me sad.

Also, if there are any “legal” issues on the quality of advice being received, you should switch advisors anyway, regardless of their behavior…

11

You say this advisor represents a licensed brokerage. If there is evidence of wrongdoing, especially if it enriched the advisor (i.e: “washing” investments to generate commisions), you might want to explore this site:
http://www.finra.org/index.htm

Not sure what they will do about unprofessional behavior though.

12

Just change advisors and be done with it.

Unless you have some real evidence of misconduct (and what you have posted here is not that, nor is it rude in my opinion) then you are going to have a rough go at this. I have had to tell clients before that I didn’t care for their rude behavior–just because you are paying me does not give you a right to abuse me.

I am making the assumption what you have written are the worst trangressions (which is what I would expect if you are trying to make your point), then you really have no basis for a complaint. I am sure the higher ups would support this woman–they may assign someone new to your account, but I wouldn’t count on her being reprimanded.

13

What are you? Four years old? If you don’t like your advisor, complain to his boss, fire him and take your money elsewhere.

14

I suggest going here:
http://www.cfp.net/learn/complaint.asp
and looking around.

I think I’d drop this matter if I were in your shoes, but you might as well have the above link for future reference.

15

You can complain to her boss, but financial advisors are not going to get into professional trouble for being rude to clients through their professional societies. They are less loosely controlled than CPAs (who have thousands of pages of what they can and can’t do with regards to clients but NOTHING says you can’t be rude, bitchy or mean to them). And complaining to her boss is, quite simply, going to result in the boss saying “Oh, I’m sorry, I’ll look into it” calling the advisor into her office and saying “your bitchy client’s bitchy daughter is complaining about the bitchy service she is receiving. God, I hope these people just close their account before we need to tell them to take their business elsewhere.”

16

Yeah, that risk came to fruition. What, exactly, did the advisor do? Nothing you’ve described sounds rude and I have to agree with most in the thread.

17

I am in the business and pretty familiar with the regulatory structure. The first thing you need to do is separate your family’s complaints about the advisor’s demeanor and your complaints about the products they advised for your mother. For complaints about poor or unsuitable advice, or things like failure to disclose fees you can register a complaint through the advisor’s regulatory organization. Go to www.finra.org. You can type in the advisor’s name and see a full complaint history. If the issue is primarily about insurance products you can go to your state’s insurance commissioner.

If this advisor is a Certified Financial Planner you might be able to levy a complaint that combines both their professionalism and their investment recommendations. CFPs are subject to a more stringent ethical code. Look around www.cfp.net.

If this is basically a customer service complaint, that she is lousy at dealing with customers and you want an apology, then you are best off going to the advisors supervisor and working through the firm’s chain to get a resolution.

I can’t really say whether this is justified or not by the OP, and I will admit that I have some concern as a complaint with FINRA can follow the advisor for the rest of their career, even if it is essentially baseless. Ultimately though I have to trust that the regulators will sort it out. No matter what you decide always put everything in writing. The firm generally must respond and at least make a cursory investigation of any written complaint. If you just call and yell at this person’s supervisor you will have accomplished absolutely nothing. Good luck and feel free to PM if you would like more specific guidance.

18

Speaking as a (happy) client of a financial advisor, any relationship like this needs to have both sides get along. It is perfectly reasonable to switch advisors for any reason, and to leave for another company if they won’t switch you or if you can’t anyone your mother likes.

Could this be a case of your mother wanting abuse in order to get attention? I’ve seen that. But it won’t cost anything to switch - the investments probably won’t even have to be sold.

19

Thanks for the advice, Mr. Slant, A.R. Cane, and fruitbat, I will check out the suggestions. Now, let me answer questions/clarify a bit.

My examples of the advisor’s behavior were poorly chosen (they just happened to be in the latest e-mail from her) and I agree they don’t necessarily reflect dreadful behavior. You’ll just have to take my word for it that it exists, because this thread is not supposed to be about “do you think the advisor is a jerk?” Different question. My question is “what to do when the advisor IS a jerk?”

There is evidence of actionable misbehavior on the advisor’s part (probably incompetence, not dishonesty) to go along with the unprofessional conduct. My mother is taking her money elsewhere (of COURSE!!!) and consulting an attorney. My husband and I are indeed being added to their accounts.

Dalej42, my mother HATES talking on the phone to the advisor and never, ever, calls and rambles. In fact, my mother has made REPEATED requests that the advisor communicate via e-mail. It is THE ADVISOR who insists on telephoning. (Which leads us all to wonder, does the advisor not want to have evidence of anything in writing? We don’t know.)

That is all. Except, if anyone knows, this thread has got me thinking more and now I am curious about one thing … when I spoke on the advisor I got an earful about how she can’t stand my mom. In that case, if the advisor herself feels that the relationship is broken, does she have a responsibility to say “Mrs. CairoCarol Mom, I can’t work successfully with you any more, but I would be glad to recommend Mr. AdvisorColleague to take over your accounts.” Or is that not something the advisor should do?

20

Many advisors will choose to communicate more over the telephone than email, and often the firm will strongly encourage it. The regulatory agencies require a higher level of diligence when it comes to written communications than oral. It doesn’t make sense, but it makes it a regulatory burden to deal with investment related issues over email. I wouldn’t necessarily use it as indication of dishonesty. If the advisor said something, your mother asked for it in writing, and refused or delayed I would be much more concerned.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with passing someone on to another advisor, but it can be hard to accomplish. In most of these firms each advisor works semi-independently. If you want to dump a client you have to find a good reason to convince someone else to take them. Often it is easier to suggest another firm altogether.

I must admit I am dying to hear the whole story. I am interested in securities arbitration and this is the rare case where if I heard both sides I don’t dare guess which one I would ultimately sympathize with.