Stan R Cohen – Ameriprise Financial Advisor

If you’re like me, you look for a financial adviser you can trust. Someone who has an assuring quality, who can explain the complicated ins and outs about investing, who seems to be looking after you best interest, almost like a big brother. Most of us who don’t have a financial background want someone to guide us. That’s an intrinsic problem because it leaves us susceptible to brokers like Stan Cohen at Ameriprise Financial.
In his 10 years as my financial adviser, Stan did numerous things that were unethical.
1. He got me heavily invested in REITS (real estate investment trusts) without disclosing that he received a 7% fee from the REITS for my investment. In short, he had a self-​interest in my making that investment, which it turned out lost half its principle. The reason his fee was so high? My investment was illiquid — I had no power to take my money out even after the value started to decline — another fact Stan failed to disclose to me.
2. He advised me to invest in unemployment insurance, a life insurance annuity and a variable annuity — all RiverSource products. He did tell me that RiverSource was owned by his company, Ameriprise Financial. He did not tell me that the life insurance annuity came with a 5% up front fee or that I would be paying a monthly fee for the insurance.
3. At one point nearly half the funds in my portfolio were owned by or affiliated with Stan’s parent company, Ameriprise. In short, he was using my money to drum up business for his own company. Many of those Ameriprise-​owned funds did worse than funds elsewhere. Stan didn’t bother to tell me any of that. And when I tried to find out the truth, to learn which funds were owned by his company, he flat-​out lied to me. I had to learn the truth by researching all the funds myself.
To me, the lesson is that though many of us are not experts in the field of finance and investing, we need to learn more for ourselves and not rely on the word of financial advisers. Otherwise, we’re just asking for unscrupulous people like Stan Cohen to take advantage of our ignorance.