Better watch out…shady financial advisers are on the come-up. The conduct of financial advisers were examined in a revealing report titled “The Market for Financial Misconduct.” The report was written by Mark Egan, Gregor Matvos and Amit Seru at the University of Minnesota and Univ. of Chicago business schools. In his report, records of more than a million financial advisers and former financial advisers between 2005 and 2015 – 87,000 of them had been disciplined for misconduct or fraud. Of the financial advisers, the state of Florida ranked no. 1 with the highest rate of misconduct. The reason for this is possibly due to the large number of retirees and elderly. Advisers have readily access to a significant amount of assets and – with the deteriorating mental and physical abilities of the elderly – can be taken advantage of. It may be a shock to some, but financial advisers shouldn’t be trusted. Areas that see the most misconduct are insurance, annuities, stocks, mutual funds, and “other.” The “other” category is scary, in that, it can include any facet of people’s money. To prevent from being taken advantage of, conduct a background check on the financial adviser. BrokerCheck.com is a service provided by the Financal Industry Regulatory Authority and is perfect for finding the business history of an adviser. Source: USAToday
