Kuchta Curole Riess: Claims Call It An Atrocious Advisor?
The Kuchta Curole Riess Group is a financial advisory firm based in New Orleans, Louisiana. They make multiple claims about their expertise and care for their clients. However, most of them are an exaggeration.
This firm uses multiple illicit tactics to mislead gullible investors. In the following points, you’ll learn about these problems and much more:
About the Kuchta Curole Riess Group
The Kuchta Curole Riess Group is a part of UBS Financial Services Inc. They are located at 1100 Poydras St Suite 900, New Orleans, LA 70163, US and their contact number is 504-584-5659.
The firm claims to help its clients tackle the uncertainties of today’s market through offering good financial advice. They claim to possess broad experience and good judgement.
The Kuchta Curole Riess Group also claims to offer quality strategies customized to its clients’ needs. They want to be their clients’ primary source of financial advice. Jacque Kuchta is the managing director of the firm.
Other notable people at the Kuchta Curole Riess Group are Scott Curole and Christopher Riess. Jacque has the CEPA certification while Scott Curole has the CFP, CRPC and CDFA certifications.
This firm offers retirement planning, multigenerational planning and education financing services.
While the various sugar-coated claims of this firm might seem attractive, they aren’t based on truth. The Kuchta Curole Riess Group is misleading investors by making false claims about how much it cares about its clients’ successes. Their terms and conditions have a plethora of conflicts of interest.
In the next section of this review, you’ll get a detailed overview of these problematic provisions:
Red Flags in the Kuchta Curole Riess Group
Untrustworthy Leadership
When you’re looking into a new wealth advisor, you should check their past experience and professional history. It would help you determine if they are worth your money or not. The best way to go about this process is to check the broker’s FINRA BrokerCheck listing.
There, you’ll learn about the broker’s state licenses, certifications, and the legal disputes they have faced from clients and authorities.
The FINRA BrokerCheck listing of Jacque Kuchta shows one major customer dispute. It occurred in 2002. Here, the client alleged that Jacque made an unauthorized trade. However, they didn’t specify any damages.
Jacque’s firm denied the claim without explaining why. They have kept most of the information related to this dispute hidden, which is a huge red flag. Also, keep in mind that it’s extremely rare for such conflicts to end in the client’s favor.
That’s because manipulative advisors like Jacque Kuchta make their clients sign several waivers at the start of their professional relationship. These waivers free them of any accountability. That’s why Jacque was able to get away with making an unauthorized trade on his client’s account.
Furthermore, the Kuchta Curole Riess Group isn’t the only advisory firm that uses this unethical tactic to take advantage of its clients. The Silich Group Morgan Stanley is a prominent example of such a horrible advisory firm. They were able to avoid paying $100,000+ in damages by using this method.
Charging Performance-based Fees
The Kuchta Curole Riess Group can charge its clients performance-based fees. This is a highly notorious practice in the finance industry because it puts the investor in a compromising position.
When the advisor follows this fee structure, they make money when they outperform a specific index. Hence, they have monetary incentive for implementing high-risk strategies and ignore the investor’s risk tolerance.
Research shows that advisors who follow a performance-based fee structure double down on risk and generate poor returns for their clients. High-risk strategies are particularly detrimental to portfolios of significant sizes. Also, they are dangerous for portfolios that want long-term growth.
Such strategies tend to generate poor or negative returns. Hence, you should avoid them in most cases.
However, when the advisor follows a performance-based fee structure, they try their best to implement the riskiest strategies.
Giving Cookie-Cutter Advice
Another prominent issue present in the Kuchta Curole Riess Group is that it performs side-by-side management. This means the firm manages large funds and smaller retail accounts at the same time.
Performing side-by-side management can deteriorate the quality of service a firm offers to all of its clients. It makes the service inconsistent.
That’s because the larger clients get the lion’s share of the firm’s resources and time. On the other hand, the smaller clients get little to nothing. In such cases, the firm gives its smaller clients cookie-cutter advice and recommendations.
Also, the firm might claim to offer personalized recommendations even if they aren’t. Not only is this misleading but also unethical.
Conclusion
The Kuchta Curole Riess Group of UBS Financial Services is a terrible service provider for any investor. It has terrible terms and conditions. On top of that, the firm’s leadership is unreliable.
Hence, it would be best for you to find a different wealth management firm and avoid them altogether.
Whoever wrote this article didn’t do enough research. There is more. The Kuchta Curole Riess Group also charges 12-b fees which makes them one of the costliest advisory groups in the area.
They claim to communicate properly about their fees and commissions but that’s all a lie. The costs of working with them are too high and the return isn’t usually what you’d expect. They aren’t what they claim to be thats for sure.