Chudom Hayes Wealth Management Morgan Stanley – Fraud (Update 2024)
Finding a skilled wealth advisor is tricky business, especially when there are a ton of shady service providers present in the industry. One shady advisory firm that you must avoid is Chudom Hayes Wealth Management, Morgan Stanley.
The firm exposes its clients to many conflicts of interest and profits more when it gives unsuitable recommendations. In the following review, you’ll get a detailed look into what’s exactly wrong with this firm and why you should avoid it:
About Chudom Hayes Wealth Management
Chudom Hayes Wealth Management is a financial advisory firm in Oak Brook, Illinois. Their office is located at 2211 York Rd Ste 100, Oak Brook, IL 60523, US, and their contact number is 630-573-9680.
Chudom Hayes Wealth Management works with a specific group of families and claims to help them focus on areas of their lives that bring them joy. They offer multiple services including tax-loss harvesting, retirement income distribution planning, strategic comprehensive financial planning, college & education planning, social security planning, legacy planning, and more.
Additional services include:
- 529 plans
- Life insurance
- Retirement planning
- Financial planning
- Exchange-traded funds
- 401(k) rollovers
- Divorce financial analysis
Kyle Chudom is the managing director of this firm. Apart from Kyle, other notable people at this firm are Eric Hayes, Sean Graft, Ryan M. DeProsperis, Mary C McGovern, and Julia Schulz.
The firm claims to help its clients stop worrying about their financial goals. However, they do so by piling up other worries on top of their clients. The disclosures of Chudom Hayes Wealth Management Morgan Stanley suggest that the firm earns more profits when it puts its clients at additional risk.
In the next section of this review, you’ll get a detailed overview of exactly how that happens:
Issues Chudom Hayes Wealth Management Tries to Hide
Faced a $5,000,000 Dispute
Before you begin working with any financial advisor, you should look them up on FINRA BrokerCheck. There, you can learn about an advisor’s past employers, state licenses, qualifications, and past disputes.
FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority) is an American corporation with private ownership. The firm is a self-regulatory organization, that affects the member brokerage firms and exchange markets.
The FINRA BrokerCheck listing of Kyle Chudom shows one client dispute. It occurred in 2001. Here, the client claimed that he made unauthorized purchases in her account and the estimated damages were a little more than $5,000,000.
However, the firm claimed that the complaint lacked merit and the client later withdrew her complaint.
Facing a $5,000,000 dispute for making unauthorized purchases in a client’s account is a huge red flag. It suggests that Kyle Chudom is prone to ignoring his client’s requirements. He is not as reliable as he claims to be.
Broker-Dealer Conflict
The advisors at Chudom Hayes Wealth Management Morgan Stanley are dual registered as advisors and brokers. This is a huge red flag because it leads to many conflicts of interest such as earning asset-based fees and transaction-based commissions on the same investment. Other issues include revenue sharing with mutual funds and giving preference to affiliated mutual funds.
Even though regulatory authorities are always trying to keep such advisors in check, they can’t do everything. Dual-registered brokers charge their retail RIA clients higher fees than their brokerage clients. Also, they prefer institutional share classes of the same underperforming mutual funds they offer brokerage clients.
Research shows that advisors who are also registered as brokers fall short of the fiduciary standard. Hence, you shouldn’t expect to get pristine service and attention from the advisors at Chudom Hayes Wealth Management.
Charging Performance-based Fees
A huge problem with this wealth advisory firm is that it charges performance-based fees. When an advisor charges a performance-based fee, they earn money only after they beat a specific benchmark.
On paper, it sounds like a lucrative fee structure for investors. But it is a nightmare.
That’s because it incentivizes the advisor to pursue high-risk strategies regardless of their suitability for the client. High-risk strategies may generate positive returns in the short term but they are too dangerous for long-term growth.
Such strategies have a high failure rate and they rarely generate any positive returns for the investor.
Research shows that advisors who charge performance-based fees tend to double down on the risk and generate terrible returns for their clients. This fee structure is particularly dangerous for investors who have low-risk tolerance and prefer security over returns.
Also, if your advisor’s high-risk strategies cause you significant losses, you can’t hold him responsible for them. But if they generate any positive returns, your advisor is free to charge you hefty fees.
That’s why you should avoid any advisor who charges performance-based fees. Sadly, Chudom Hayes Wealth Management is one of them.
Conclusion
Overall, Chudom Hayes Wealth Management Morgan Stanley is a pathetic wealth advisory firm. It exposes its clients to excessive risk to make an extra buck. Additionally, it has faced a major legal dispute in the past.
Due to these reasons, it would be best to find a different financial advisory firm and ignore Chudom Hayes Wealth Management altogether.
Sad to see how much our finance industry has degraded over the last decade