RIA Investor Loss Lawyers

Registered Investment Advisors (RIAs)

Our Trusted RIA Investment Advisor Loss Lawyers Represent Investors

If you have suffered investor losses that you suspect may have been caused by the negligence or misconduct of your registered investment advisor, Shepherd Smith Edwards and Kantas (investorlawyers.com) may be able to help. We represent retail investors, retirees, elderly investors, institutional investors, and high-net-worth individual investors in recouping their portfolio losses from RIAs.

What Is a Registered Investment Advisor?

An RIA is an individual or company that is registered with federal and/or state regulatory agencies and offers financial advice to clients. Although initially, barring certain exceptions, the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 required that investment advisory firms and sole investment advisers be registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), amendments made since then now only mandate that advisers with at least $100M in assets under management be SEC-registered. Everyone else usually just has to be registered in the state in which their main place of business is located.

Registered investment advisors owe their clients a fiduciary duty to act in their best financial interests. This means going beyond just ensuring that any investing strategy, trust, individualized plan, or insurance products that they recommend or sell is suitable given a customer’s investing profile, age, financial goals, and risk tolerance level.

A registered investment adviser may be a one-person shop run out of a strip mall or another small office or a huge firm representing tens of thousands of clients. The individual RIA may also be a registered representative with a brokerage firm, which can allow them to sell a variety of financial products to customers, as well as make trades on their behalf. To that end, there are also investment firms that are dually registered as brokerage firms and investment advisers.

RIAs will usually charge clients a percentage of their assets under management or a flat or hourly fee for giving advice.

How Can Our RIA Investor Loss Lawyers?

Investment adviser fraud is what happens when your RIA engages in misconduct or negligence or breaches its fiduciary duty to act in your best interests, and such actions cause you to lose money. Sometimes this is a case of deliberate misappropriation or other criminal wrongdoing. In other instances, bad financial advice, unsuitability, misrepresentation and omissions, or other actions may have been at play. For example, your investment adviser may not be aware that they are advising you to get involved in an investment opportunity that is actually part of a Ponzi scam or another type of fraud. Their poor advice and due diligence failures, which violate your best interests, may be grounds for suing your RIA for damages.

While the SEC and state regulators can and frequently do go after registered investment advisors for violations that cause investors harm, your best chance for financial recovery begins with exploring your legal options with our knowledgeable investment advisor loss attorneys today. We can help you assess whether you have grounds for a securities fraud lawsuit against your RIA and how to best proceed.

Since 1990, Shepherd Smith Edwards and Kantas have been representing investors in their securities fraud advisers. Our dedicated registered investment advisory fraud attorneys, along with our team of seasoned fraud assistants, legal assistants, and others, have over a century’s worth of combined experience working in securities law and the securities industry. We know the RIA industry very well and the ways in which unsavory practices by certain financial fiduciaries can lead to serious investor losses.

We have the skills, resources, and knowledge to go after even the largest registered investment advisors in the United States. Over the years, we have helped thousands of investors collectively recover many millions of dollars in litigation, mediation, and arbitration.

In the event that your individual registered investment advisor who allegedly engaged in wrongdoing or carelessness also happens to be a registered broker affiliated with a broker-dealer, it may make sense to consider filing a FINRA arbitration claim against that firm for failing to properly supervise this employee. Many sole practitioners lack onsite supervision and guidance. In such instances, our savvy FINRA lawyers would be the ones working with you to pursue damages from that firm.

To schedule your free, no-obligation case consultation with one of our experienced RIA Investor Loss Lawyers, call (800) 259-9010 today or contact us online.