Investment Professionals, Inc. Charged with Selling Unsuitable Investments to Seniors

Massachusetts regulator William Galvin recently charged San Antonio broker-dealer, Investment Professionals, Inc. (IPI), with allegedly running high-pressure sales contests at community banks. These contests allegedly harmed senior citizens, including a customer with stage-4 cancer who had nearly all her assets placed in a variable annuity.

Investment Professionals purportedly sold unsuitable investment products to seniors at its partner community banks in Massachusetts, according to an announcement from Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin.  Eastern Bank of Boston, Mutual Bank of Brockton, East Boston Savings Bank, Edgartown National Bank, Cooperative Bank of Roslindale and Homefield Credit Union of North Grafton were among the banks mentioned in the complaint.

The company’s alleged aggressive sales culture purportedly rewarded sales volume at the expense of the suitability of the investments sold to seniors who had deposits at the banks. In one case, an Eastern Bank customer with terminal late stage cancer allegedly had nearly all of her assets placed in a variable annuity, leaving her without access to her savings, according to Galvin’s complaint.

The complaint further alleges that between 2013 and 2016 Investment Professionals ran at least five aggressive sales contests, all running counter to the firm’s own policies and procedures, according to the complaint. The high-pressure practices and failure to supervise led to unsuitable transactions to senior investors by at least two representatives of Investment Professionals working out of Eastern Bank, Galvin alleged.

Galvin’s Boston-based office is seeking restitution for senior customers in the Investment Professionals case, as well as disgorgement of all fees and commissions obtained by the firm.

Eastern Bank is the broker-dealer’s largest partner in Massachusetts. The firm’s top 10 representatives for the bank received 2,208 customer referrals between January 2014 and June 2016, about 45% of whom were at least 65 years old.

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The foregoing information, which is all publicly available, is being provided by The White Law Group. The White Law Group, LLC is a national securities fraud, securities arbitration, investor protection, and securities regulation/compliance law firm with offices in Chicago, Illinois and Franklin, Tennessee.

For more information on The White Law Group, visit www.whitesecuritieslaw.com.