The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority has suspended a rep for two months and fined him $5,000 for recommending seven unsuitable variable annuity exchanges to three older clients.
According to FINRA's order, between February 2017 and June 2020, Jeffrey Roy Schuur, a general securities principal with Oakwood Capital Securities, recommended the exchanges without a reasonable basis to believe that the transactions were suitable based on the customers’ investment profiles and objectives.
With the actions, Schuur violated FINRA Rules 2330, 2111 and 2010.
"Schuur failed to reasonably consider the customers’ losses of existing benefits from the liquidation of their existing variable annuities," the order states.
"Five of these exchanges depleted the accumulated benefit bases on the customers’ living benefit riders or eliminated the rider benefits entirely," according to FINRA. "The losses of these riders were contrary to these customers’ investment goals and financial needs," the order states, with two of the exchanges depleting "the value of the death benefit in one customer’s existing variable annuity, contrary to his stated investment goals."
Schurr accepted and consented to FINRA's findings without admitting or denying them.
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