Nazie Saffari-Moini Merrill Lynch: A Fraudster veiled With Cloak of Trust
If you look at financial advisory services in the Beverly Hills region, you might come across the name of Nazie Saffari-Moini Merrill Lynch. She is a financial advisor who hides shady provisions in the fine print to trap clients in unfavorable agreements.
Before you start working with any financial advisor, you should check if they follow proper ethics while offering their services. This way, you can be sure that you can trust your advisor.
However, in the case of Nazie Saffari-Moini, you can’t trust the advisor at all. Her disclosures show that her firm benefits more when they ignore your interests. The following review will give you a more detailed look at how they pull it off and why you should be wary of them.
Who is Nazie Saffari-Moini Merrill Lynch
Nazie Saffari-Moini Merrill Lynch is a wealth management advisor based in Beverly Hills, California. Her office address is 9560 Wilshire Blvd 3rd Floor, Beverly Hills, CA 90212, US, and her contact number is 310-858-3409.
Some of the areas Nazie Saffari claims to help her clients with are:
- Trust and estate planning services
- Long-term care insurance
- Exchange funds
- Home loans
- Donor-advised funds
- Credit cards
- Insurance
- Structured lending
And many others.
Nazie Saffari works with high-net-worth individuals and families and claims to help them manage their wealth. She claims to focus on communication to understand the requirements of her clients effectively. However, her disclosures suggest otherwise.
There are multiple shady provisions in her disclosures that incentivize her to ignore her clients’ requirements. More on this in the next section of the review.
Problematic Provisions and Legal Disputes of Nazie Saffari-Moini Merrill Lynch
$100,000+ Legal Dispute with a Client
Nazie Saffari-Moini’s FINRA BrokerCheck profile shows that she has had one legal dispute with a client. It’s dated 5-2-2012 and the customer has alleged misrepresentation regarding a Lehman Brothers preferred security purchased in February 2008.
They requested $100,005.00 in damages however the firm denied the claim entirely. Note that Nazie Saffari-Moini firm hasn’t shared why or on what grounds they denied this claim.
Most financial advisors get away with misrepresentation and unsuitable recommendations through the waivers they make you sign early on. It’s obvious that Nazie Saffari Moini firm utilized this tactic to avoid paying the damages.
Financial advisors rarely face legal disputes with requested damages going over $100,000. This dispute indicates that Nazie Saffari-Moini doesn’t put her client’s interests ahead of her firm’s.
Moreover, the following provisions in her disclosures show that she hasn’t improved on anything since this dispute.
Broker-Dealer Conflict
The first and probably the most prominent issue in Nazie’s disclosures is that she is a broker-dealer along with being an advisor. This can lead to various compensation-related conflicts of interest such as unnecessary insurance, biased recommendations, and more.
Did You Know?
US Securities and Exchange Commission is the agency under Federal court for the dispute settlement of broker-dealer conflicts.
Research shows that financial advisors who are broker-dealers don’t offer high-quality service and fail to meet the fiduciary standard.
Such advisors earn compensation from certain companies to promote their investment products. So, they might ignore your financial requirements and goals to suggest the promoted investment. You should only trust a broker-dealer advisor if you’re certain that they won’t prioritize their interests over yours.
The $100k dispute Nazie had with her client suggests that she can easily ignore your interests for her own.
Charging a Redundant Fee
Nazie Saffari-Moini Merrill Lynch offers investment products that charge 12b-1 fees. This is a marketing fee which goes straight into Nazie’s pockets. The 12b-1 fee is highly notorious in the finance industry because it only increases the cost of the investment without showing any value.
An SEC study found that investments that charge the 12b-1 fee don’t perform any better than those that don’t charge this fee.
This is a huge issue because it means you pay extra for getting no benefits whatsoever. Also, the ROI of such investments is lower than those that don’t charge this fee because of the increased fee.
The 12b-1 fee also opens up an opportunity for the advisor to charge hidden fees. Another drawback of charging this fee is that it is a percentage fee. So, how much you’ll have to pay would depend on the size of your portfolio.
This is a particularly huge drawback for individuals and families with large portfolios. The 12b-1 fee compounds over time, increasing the financial load on you. Hence, you should stay away from investments that charge this fee.
Selling Proprietary and Affiliated Investments
Nazie is a part of Merrill Lynch and offers many proprietary and affiliated investment products. These products offer her higher commissions than other investments.
So, she can’t recommend any investments outside of the proprietary and affiliated options available. Even in these products, some products will offer her higher commissions than the rest.
In such cases, it becomes quite difficult to trust the recommendations of the advisor because they might be motivated by the commissions instead of your financial requirements.
The commissions an advisor may earn from the proprietary investment products is among the biggest reasons behind misrepresentation and unsuitable recommendations.
It’s quite common among shady advisors to sell proprietary investments. The Schultz Group UBS is a notorious example.
Conclusion
After going through the $100,000+ dispute and the suspicious provisions present in her terms and conditions, it’s obvious that Nazie Saffari-Moini is an unreliable advisor. She has way too many red flags to count.
You should look for a different advisor who truly cares about her clients. Working with such a selfish and unethical advisor can put you in a very damaging position, especially in the long run.
