Toronto Lawyers Representing Investors Who Received Negligent or Fraudulent Advice from Brokers

Financial professionals, including brokers, accountants, mutual fund advisors, financial planners, and others are obligated to act in the best interests of their clients and only recommend products or investments that are suitable in terms of each client’s personal circumstances, tolerance for risk, and net worth.

If you believe that you received poor guidance and advice from your financial advisor and have suffered a financial loss as a result, you may have grounds for a claim against them. The lawyers at Milosevic & Associates can help. We regularly represent clients whose investments, savings, and wealth management plans have been negatively impacted by the actions of their financial advisors.

Duty of Care of Brokers 

Fundamentally, any broker who is doing anything beyond simply executing a client’s instructions has a duty to know their client and assess a potential investment’s suitability for that client bearing in mind the client’s:

• Level of knowledge about investments
• Investment objectives
• Tolerance for risk
• Income
• Net worth and
• Age

The Broker-Client Relationship 

The broker-client relationship can be thought of as a continuum. On one extreme is the type of broker-client relationship where the investor or client is inexperienced and requires a great deal of guidance and advice from the broker. In this type of relationship, the level of trust between the broker and the investor is very high, as the broker essentially makes all the investment decisions for the client. This may be the basis for a court to impute a fiduciary relationship since the duty of care of that broker towards that client is quite high.

At the other end of the extreme is the type of broker-client relationship where the client or investor is quite sophisticated and has a deep and fulsome understanding of relevant financial and investment matters. In this type of relationship, the broker provides little or no guidance and simply takes instruction from the client as to how he or she would like their funds invested. The broker’s duty of care towards such a client may be lower than it would be for a client who is not as knowledgeable about investing.

In between these two extremes is a wide variety of different types of arrangements involving clients with diverse levels of sophistication.  The duty of care that a broker owes a client will depend on the specific circumstances of each relationship.

Negligence of Financial Advisors 

Advisors can face liability for a variety of actions, including:

• Failure to adequately warn a client about the risks of an investment
• Improperly advising a client to invest in a product that is unsuitable given their financial circumstances and limits
• Failure to advise a client to restructure their portfolio after major life changes (i.e. divorce, second marriage, loss of a job, etc.) and
• Failure to advise on the probable tax implications of a particular investment.

For Exceptional Legal Representation in Claims Against Brokers and Financial Advisors Contact Milosevic & Associates 

The highly-experienced professional liability lawyers at Milosevic & Associates represent investors who have received negligent advice from their investment advisors. To learn more about how we can help you call us at 416-916-1387 or contact us online.