Triad Advisors

Founded in 1998, Triad Advisors is an independent brokerage firm and multi-custodial Securities and Exchange Commission-registered investment advisor known for its hybrid Registered Investment Advisor (RIA) model. Formerly a Ladenburg Thalmann Financial Services firm until 2020, the broker-dealer, in the wake of a merger, is now an Advisor Group firm.

Triad Advisors is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. The brokerage firm reportedly has around 640 financial professionals with about $32B assets under management.

Over the years, Triad Advisors has been the subject of several regulatory cases. Here are a few of them:

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) imposed approximately $194K in fines and restitution over Triad Advisor’s purported failure to supervise a financial advisor who was accused of making unsuitable mutual fund trades in clients’ accounts.

FINRA contended that between 2015 and 2017, the broker-dealer had a supervisory system that did not properly monitor short-term trades involving mutual funds. Instead, the firm allegedly depended too much on an automated monitoring system.

Nine Triad Advisors customers lost nearly $44K as a result of these deficiencies. The self-regulatory organization (SRO) also found supervisory failures related to variable annuity exchanges.

Censured and fined $125K, Triad Advisors was found to have not given sales charge discounts to Unit Investment Trust (UIT) customers who were eligible for them. This purportedly went on from May 2009 to April 2014, causing clients to be excessively charged over $102K. FINRA found that Triad Advisors lacked the proper supervisory procedures for detecting when UIT discounts were warranted.

FINRA fined Triad Advisors $625K for not properly supervising its consolidated reporting systems. The SRO contends that this led to customers receiving statements that included inaccurate valuations.

The broker-dealer also allegedly did not properly supervise hundreds of brokers for over two years, making it possible for them to generate and send inaccurate and false reports to clients. As part of a settlement, Triad Advisors customers that were harmed were paid $375K in restitution.

Triad Advisors is one of the dozens of brokerage firms accused of enriching themselves while promoting and selling GPB Capital Holdings’ private placements to customers. The latter, a New York-based alternative asset firm, was sued by the SEC for allegedly operating an over $1.8B Ponzi scam.

GPB’s key executives are also contending with parallel criminal charges over the scheme that is believed to have defrauded over 17,000 investors, including retail investors and senior investors that should never have been involved in these risky private placements, to begin with.

Triad Advisors is one of the firms that should have done the proper due diligence to determine whether the GPB Funds were not only suitable for customers but also made sure that these were, in fact, legitimate and safe investments for all of their clients. High commissions likely made the allure of these private placements, which invested in car dealerships and waste management, too appealing.

As broker-dealers collectively made some $160M in commissions, investors suffered serious financial losses. By March 2020, Triad Advisors had reported in its financial statement to the SEC that it was already the subject of at least nine investor cases seeking what could end up being over $2M in damages.

Our GPB private placement attorneys at Shepherd Smith Edwards and Kantas (SSEK Law Firm at investorlawyers.com) are pursuing many of the broker-dealers that sold these investments to customers, and Triad Advisors is one of the firms that we’ve brought FINRA arbitration cases against on behalf of GPB investors, including:

• A $500K GPB investment claim for a retired Texas couple whose Triad Advisors registered representatives, Jack Jones and Mark Robare, overconcentrated their accounts in these unsuitable investments.
• Another $500K GPB private placement case naming ex-Triad Advisors broker Michael Payne. He made misrepresentations and unsuitably sold these investments to an older Utah couple.

SSEK Law Firm has recovered many millions of dollars for thousands of investors in FINRA arbitration, litigation, and mediation. If you suspect your losses from working with a Triad Advisors financial advisor may be due to broker misconduct or broker-dealer negligence, call (800) 259-9010 today or contact us online.