Professionals that invest your retirement money will soon have to do so with your best interests in mind. Last month, three professors released working papers related to licensed financial professionals noting among other things that might be very disconcerting is that five of the ten counties in the United States with the highest percentages of financial professionals with public disclosures are located in Florida.
In addition, a number of household name firms have high percentages of financial professionals with public disclosures, and Oppenheimer tops the list with nearly 20% of their financial professionals having one or more public disclosure on their records (and a significantly higher percentage in Florida).
A disclosure is not necessarily evidence of wrongdoing, as there are sometimes disclosures where a customer complains and (the customer themselves) or arbitrators dismiss the complaint. Even accounting for a number of different scenarios and explanations, it appears that the Oppenheimer roster of brokers (based on these statistics) would raise some eyebrows. Supposedly, Oppenheimer has undertaken some changes and in that process has asked �a number� of brokers to leave. Perhaps a new Chief Compliance Officer, increasing compliance efforts, and the new fiduciary rule will all serve to improve the efforts at Oppenheimer, but it never hurt to be careful.
If you have maintained an account with Oppenheimer and you have incurred losses in excess of $100,000, please contact the securities arbitration and investment litigation lawyers for a free consultation.
