Articles Tagged with Polarius Platinum III (B Shares) VA

Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts William Galvin has filed charges against LPL Financial (LPLA) for its alleged failure to supervise one of its brokers. Roger Zullo is accused of bilking clients for years by selling variable annuities to retirees even though the investments were not suitable for them.

In his complaint, Galvin contends that Zullo lied to supervisors and generated false client financial suitability profiles so he could sell scores of high-commission, illiquid VAs to make money for himself and the firm. Because of these investments, said the state regulator, many older clients were unable to access their funds for years.

The complaint notes that for three years, Zullo and LPL received over $1.8M in VA commissions from sales. The Polarius Platinum III (B Shares) VA appeared to be the source of a large chunk of the commissions. Galvin said that of the more than $1.8M in VA annuity commissions that Zullo was able to generate, over $1.7M of it came from this particular variable annuity, which paid a 7% commission. 90% of this went to Zullo, while his firm received the rest. Also, clients whom Zullo could convince to move to the Polaris Platinum variable annuity usually had to pay surrender charges.

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