As a former financial advisor for Morgan Stanley for 1.5 years and the first female to make it through the program successfully in the last 5 years, I have gleaned a lot of information about the securities industry.  Of course, I think it’s only fair to share now! 

This is really Part I of a series titled, “Secrets behind the Financial Curtain: Advice from a former FA” that I had planned to write to teach investors how to ask their financial advisors better questions.  Consider this a public service….

Excluding all financial people, I think 100% of the world has no idea that you can get a really good glimpse into the background, training, work history, and complaint history of a financial advisor from FINRA, the largest non-governmental regulator of all securities firms. 

Go to: http://brokercheck.finra.org/Search/Search.aspx

All you need to know is the first and last legal name of your financial advisor.  Even that may not be necessary because I also had to register aliases (i.e. If my legal name was in Chinese, for instance, but I go by Jackie, then I need to register both so I am easily searchable). 

After you put in their full name, you can see reports of any advisor.  It will not show anything interesting until you go to the far right and click on “View full pdf.”  That’s where all the good stuff is hiding.  :)

You’ll see my full legal name and companies that I’m registered with.  You can see when I took my licensing exams so I wont be able to fudge my experience.  Most of all, you will get to see if there are any pending lawsuits or customer complaints against me (We were obligated to log EVERY complaint). 

Some interesting factoids:

  • My entire work history for the past 10 years is listed there.  If I had a break of more than 3 months between employment, I would have to list unemployed.  Embarrassing yes….so I had to list my short stint with Starbucks while studying for the LSAT…more embarrassing. 
  • If your “advisor” is not Series 7 licensed, he’s not a real financial advisor.  He’s one of those insurance people posing as a financial advisor.  Technically, they sell financial-related and planning products but it’s not the same.  Why are you bothering with an insurance rep to buy mutual funds?  They are not trained or licensed to do that.
  • A financial advisor that has been in the industry for more than 10 years will most likely have had a complaint or lawsuit against them.  Always ask the FA and their supervisor about it first, instead of just cutting him/her out of the running. 
  • To be honest, FA’s do really look down on advisors that jump around a lot.  If the jumps are short (< 1 year), then that means they failed their company’s quota.  If the jumps are medium (5 – 10 years tenure), then that advisor was usually offered a package deal to move firms.  Be ready to move with that advisor if you choose him/her.

Happy Searching! 

(Feel free to ask questions in the comments section.  I will answer as blog posts)

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