Kevin McMullen Merrill Lynch – Untrustworthy (Updated 2024)

If you’re looking for a financial advisor, you might hear the name Kevin McMullen Merrill Lynch. He is a shady and manipulative wealth advisor who puts his clients at excessive risk for profit. 

His marketing team ensures that you don’t find out about his terrible terms and conditions. However, it’s your right to know about these provisions. Also, there are plenty of shady provisions in his terms and conditions.

The following review will shed light on those provisions to give you an idea of what to expect if you choose to work with him: 

About Kevin McMullen Merrill Lynch

Kevin McMullen Merrill Lynch is a wealth advisor based in Carmel, Indiana. His address is 510 E 96th St Suite 500, Indianapolis, IN 46240, US, and his contact number are 317-848-5540. 

He claims to help his clients achieve their financial goals whether they are accumulating wealth or want to transfer it to future generations. His firm serves business owners, successful families, and corporate executives. 

Kevin’s team makes many sugar-coated claims about how much it cares about its clients and their success. They claim to perform financial analysis and establish clear financial goals to design a custom strategy. 

Kevin McMullen is the managing director of McMullen and Associates. Other notable people at his firm include Jerry McMullen, Patrick J Rhodes, and Hannah Hayes. 

McMullen and Associates offer many services to its clients including: 

  • Long-term care insurance
  • Home loans
  • Trust & estate planning services
  • Succession planning
  • Concentrated stock management
  • Home equity lines of credit
  • Exchange funds
  • Impact portfolios
  • Investment advisory accounts
  • Structured lending
  • Fixed income products
  • Alternative investments

And plenty of others. 

Certainly, Kevin McMullen Merrill Lynch seems like a trustworthy advisor if you only read his brochures. On the contrary, if you look at his disclosures you’d realize that most of his claims are false and he only cares about his profits. In the next section of this review, you’ll learn why it’s so difficult to trust him: 

Red Flags in Kevin McMullen Merrill Lynch

$90,000 Dispute with a Client

Kevin McMullen Merrill Lynch’s FINRA BrokerCheck listing shows that he has had one dispute with a client. The dispute occurred in 2001. Here, the client alleged FC unsuitably invested accounts. 

Do You Know?

There are ‘Small Scale Courts’ that can solve the consumer-broker dispute. These courts are speedy and work with full efficiency. However, the court varies with the amount involved, as the small-scale courts deal with scams of maximum $25000.

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The client requested $90,000 in damages. 

However, Kevin’s firm didn’t take any action on the claim. There’s no additional information available on the dispute so you can’t know why his firm didn’t take any action. Because it’s an old dispute, Kevin has hidden most of the details of the dispute. 

Still, facing a $90,000 dispute for making unsuitable recommendations is no small issue. It means that Kevin can easily ignore his client’s requirements to make an extra buck. As you’ll look at his disclosures, you will realize that he is still ignoring his clients’ interests for his profits. 

Crooked financial advisors use many tactics to avoid accountability. The Miller Miller Group Morgan Stanley is another financial advisory firm that used this exact tactic to deny a claim in 2003. 

Putting Clients at Excessive Risk

The first issue present in his disclosures is that he charges performance-based fees. When your advisor follows this fee structure, it means he makes money only when he beats a specific index. 

On paper, it might sound like a lucrative fee structure. But in truth, it’s terrible for almost all kinds of investors. 

That’s because advisors who follow this fee structure have an incentive for ignoring their clients’ risk tolerance. To beat the index, most advisors implement high-risk strategies that are detrimental to their client’s portfolios.

High-risk strategies rarely generate any positive returns. In most cases, they generate poor or negative returns for the investor. Also, many investors have low-risk tolerance and don’t want quick returns on their investments. 

But the advisor wouldn’t care about your low-risk tolerance if they are following a performance-based fee structure. 

High-risk strategies can wipe out huge chunks of an investor’s capital. That’s why Congress banned charging performance-based fees in 1940. Many investors were losing money because of their advisor’s greed. 

Financial advisors have been able to charge performance-based fees only since 1985. 

Kevin McMullen Merrill Lynch handles clients of all sorts and performs side-by-side management. This is a huge red flag because side-by-side management reduces the quality of service an advisor offers. 

Side-by-side management means an advisor handles small retail accounts and large funds at the same time. In such cases, the advisor spends most of his resources on his larger clients and gives cookie-cutter advice to his smaller clients. 

There’s nothing worse than getting cookie-cutter recommendations from your advisor under the guise of personalized service. 

Conclusion

Even though Kevin McMullen Merrill Lynch makes many boastful claims about his services, he doesn’t care one bit about his clients. His disclosures have too many conflicts of interest. 

Due to these reasons, it would be best to find a different wealth advisor and avoid Kevin altogether. 

2.6Expert Score
Horrible

Kevin McMullen Merrill Lynch is an unreliable advisor. He gives generalized recommendations to his clients and falsely claims to offer personalized service. You would be better off with someone else.

Trust
2.5
Experience
3
Service
3
Concern for Clients
2
Pros
  • None
Cons
  • Faced a $90,000 dispute
  • Puts clients at excessive risk
  • Gives generalized recommendations

1 Comment
  1. Thanks for posting this review. You just saved me from making a big mistake, quite literally.

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