ATTORNEY NEWSLETTER
Beware the Hard-Sell Free Lunch
High Pressure Sales Seminars
Have you ever come back to your car at a shopping mall and found a free lunch flier on your windshield? Or maybe a invitation by mail to a free dinner seminar? Some insurance agents are notorious for relying on the free meal come-on to lure consumers, especially seniors, to sales presentations offering free food. After the meal comes the hard sell. Watch out. The Marin County annuity and financial elder abuse lawyers recommend seniors especially avoid life insurance and deferred annuities of any kind, and warn you to be careful when you RSVP.[1] At a minimum, take a close look before you buy. If you’re over 60 and already purchased a contract here in Marin or elsewhere in California and have suffered a loss due to cancellation, replacement, full or partial surrender or high fees, call the California financial elder abuse and annuity attorneys at Evans Law Firm, Inc. today at 415-441-8669 for a free review of your policy. A list of major carriers in California appears below.
An investigative reporter for The New York Times recently attended one of these seminars after his eighty-year-old aunt received an invitation in the mail for a free steak dinner hosted by a local insurance agent.[2] Before the meal, the host’s staff distributed a chart showing an equity indexed annuity outperforming the S&P. Buried in fine print below the chart was a disclosure that the chart did not show the effect of reinvested dividends. An expert later confirmed to the reporter that the S&P outperformed the annuity by 33.72 percent when dividends were reinvested. The reporter also discovered that the carrier who had prepared the chart had discontinued the very annuity depicted in it. Still further investigation revealed that the host had once been the subject of a state cease-and-refrain order for offering “unqualified” securities after an ailing senior pulled equity from his home to invest in a real estate development in Costa Rica promoted by the agent. When the reporter tried to ask the agent about his past, he refused to answer questions.
The reporter sums up his free dinner experience this way:
“While the steak dinner pitch might not be a con game, it is a bit of a psychological dance. You attend, you eat free food and by the time the cheesecake arrives, you may feel you owe a salesperson a one-on-one meeting.
Then you’re on the hook. If these meals didn’t catch lots of people, salespeople wouldn’t keep paying for them.”
Contact Us
Bottom line is beware the sales pitch that comes with a free meal. Never buy on the spot and always consult a professional with nothing to gain by your purchase and review any proposal with your tax advisor. If you or a loved one has suffered loss on an equity indexed annuity or any other annuity in Marin County or elsewhere in California, contact San Francisco and California annuity and financial elder abuse attorney Ingrid M. Evans and the other attorneys at Evans Law Firm at (415) 441-8669, or by email at <a href=”mailto:info@evanslaw.com”>info@evanslaw.com</a>. Our attorneys have experience with complex financial contracts and large insurance companies. We can help guide your case through a jury trial or toward an equitable settlement. We handle cases involving physical and financial elder abuse, qui tam and whistleblower law, nursing home abuse, whole life insurance and universal life insurance, and indexed, variable, and fixed annuities.
Annuities and life insurance produce large sales commissions for brokers but are often inappropriate products for consumers, especially seniors. Leading providers and distributors of life insurance and fixed, variable and fixed indexed deferred annuities in California are listed below. We are not in any way suggesting that any of these carriers or distributors has done anything wrong. Rather, the list is provided solely as a reference for our readers.
AIG/American General Life Insurance Company
Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America
American Equity Investment Life Insurance Company
American General Life Insurance Company/AIG
American National Life Insurance Company
Ameriprise Financial/RiverSource Life Insurance Company
Ameriprise Financial/Securities America, Inc.
Athene Annuity & life Assurance Company
Athene Annuity and Life Company
Athene USA
Aviva Life Insurance Company
AXA Equitable Life Insurance Company/AXA US
Bankers Life Insurance and Casualty Company
Brighthouse Financial, Inc./MetLife
Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.
Crump Life Insurance Services, Inc.
CUNA Mutual Group/CMFG Life Insurance Company
EquiTrust Life Insurance Company
Fidelity & Guaranty Life Insurance Company
Forethought Life Insurance Company/Global Atlantic Financial Group
Genworth Life Insurance Company
Global Atlantic Financial Group/Forethought Life Insurance Company
Guardian Life Insurance Company
Guggenheim Partners/Security Benefit Life Insurance Company
ING USA Annuity and Life Insurance Company
Jackson National Life Insurance Company
John Hancock Life Insurance Company
Lincoln Benefit Life Company
Lincoln Financial Group
Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company
Merrill Lynch Life Agency Inc.
Metlife/Metropolitan Life Insurance Company/Brighthouse Financial, Inc.
National Western Life Insurance Company
Nationwide Life Insurance Company
New York Life Insurance Company
North American Company for Life and Health Insurance
Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company
Oxford Life Insurance Company
Pacific Life Insurance Company
Principal Financial Group
Prudential Life Insurance Company
Raymond James Insurance Group
RiverSource Life Insurance Company/Ameriprise Financial
Securities America, Inc./Ameriprise Financial
Security Benefit Life Insurance Company/Guggenheim Partners
Symetra Life Insurance Company
Transamerica Life Insurance Company
Unum Life Insurance Company of America
Voya/Reliastar Life Insurance Company
Wells Fargo Advisors
World Financial Group Insurance Agency, Inc.
[1] We do not provide investment or tax advice but our litigators represent senior policyholders who lose money through cancellations, surrenders or fees on these contracts.
[2] You can read the full article here: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/30/your-money/retirement-annuities-steak-dinner.html.
