If you’re looking for a wealth advisor in Lyndon, Kentucky, you might come across the name of Dean Donohue Ameriprise. He is a horrible wealth advisor who uses multiple unethical tactics to get his way.
The following review will help you learn more on how he traps investors in terrible agreements. This way, you’d be better able to make a well-informed decision on him:
Dean Donohue Ameriprise: Who is He?
Dean Donohue Ameriprise is a private wealth advisor who runs the Encore Wealth Management Group. His office is located at 9405 Mill Brook Rd Ste 101, Louisville, KY 40223, US and his phone number is 502-412-4050.
His areas of focus are:
- Charitable giving
- Tax planning strategies
- Insurance
- Retirement plan distribution
- Retirement income strategies
- Executive compensation and benefit strategies
- Small business
- Investments
- Estate planning strategies
- Wealth preservation strategies
- Retirement planning strategies
He has CFP, CRPC, and APMA certifications.
Did You Know?
APMA certification marks you as an ‘Accredited Portfolio Management Advisor’. The program educates the financial advisors on finer details of Portfolio and its creation & augmentation.
Dean claims to help his clients with identifying financial goals and creating customized strategies that suit your risk tolerance.
Also, Dean claims to give advanced investment advice to help his clients’ complex planning needs and cash management solutions to cover their everyday essentials.
Apart from Dean, other people in the financial advisory team of this firm are Jonathan P Smith, Courtney Yartz, and John Moriarty.
However, the accolades and lucrative claims of this firm might distract you from reality. Dean has a long history of legal conflicts with clients. Furthermore, his firm’s disclosures have multiple problematic provisions. More on this in the next section of this review:
Legal Conflicts and Predatory Provisions of Dean Donohue Ameriprise
Multiple Complaints from Clients
Dean’s first legal dispute occurred in 2003. Here, the client alleged that he is entitled to the full death of the two annuities in question. He requested $85,000 in damages and settled the case for $21,452.
Dean responded to the conflict by saying that the annuities in question were set up improperly. Hence, there was a delay in the death settlement.
His second dispute is still pending and it was filed on 12-3-2020. Here, the claimant alleged that she was recommended a high-commission, illiquid and unsuitable investment. She requested $100,000 in damages.
Keep in mind that it’s quite rare for such disputes to end in the client’s favor. That’s because shady advisors like Dean Donohue Ameriprise make their clients sign multiple waivers. These waivers free them of any accountability while they make recommendations.
The pending dispute is proof that Dean gives unsuitable recommendations to his clients. You should be extremely cautious of working with such wealth advisors.
If you’re a client of Dean Donohue, it would be best if you reviewed your investments to see if they are truly suitable for you or not.
Selling Investments Instead of Recommending Them
Dean and his firm earn commissions from the sale of certain investment products. He can sell proprietary products and affiliated securities of Ameriprise Financial Services. This can exposes his clients to several major conflicts of interest.
Earning commissions from certain investments can make the advisor biased. Dean and his team can ignore your financial requirements and goals while making recommendations. That’s because they are more likely to recommend an investment that generates higher commissions regardless of its suitability for your portfolio.
So, trusting the recommendations of this firm becomes extremely difficult.
Earning commissions is among the biggest reasons why financial advisors give unsuitable recommendations to their clients. They might value their own wallets more than their clients’ financial successes.
Moreover, Dean’s team would ignore any investments that don’t generate commissions for them. So, you can expect to miss out on many excellent investments because your advisor wouldn’t earn commissions from them.
Certainly, it’s a terrible deal for any investor.
Charging Performance-based Fees
Another prominent issue in Dean Donohue Ameriprise’s disclosures is that he charges performance-based fees.
Charging performance-based fee incentivizes him and his team to implement high-risk strategies regardless of your risk tolerance. Research shows that advisors who follow this fee structure double down on the risk and generate poor returns for their investors.
Also, high-risk strategies can cause you severe losses in volatile markets. What’s worse is that you can’t hold Dean responsible for recommending such terrible strategies.
His firm would blame you for the losses and claim that you understood all the risks before they implemented such a strategy. Like the previous provision, this one also makes things detrimental for the investor.
Summary
Dean Donohue Ameriprise has a long history of legal disputes. Furthermore, his firm’s disclosures have multiple provisions that put their clients at excessive risk unnecessarily.
Most of his clients might be unaware of these terrible provisions as well. All the evidence suggests that it would be best to avoid dealing with this firm. Luckily, there are a ton of other financial advisory firms present in the region.
The staff here is nice and Dean is nice too. But they waste too much time. They don’t respect their client’s time as much as you think they would. Poor communication is another issue here.