Hartford Shows Advisers How to Use Form 5500

The Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc., has launched a new educational campaign to help financial advisers review retirement plan clients' needs, improve plan designs, and enhance employee participation.

The campaign demonstrates to financial advisers how to use clients’ Form 5500 to help them identify potential problems with their 401(k) plans, according to a press release. As part of the campaign, The Hartford created a brochure that takes advisers through each step necessary to complete Form 5500 and provides tips for improving existing plans, enhancing service, and educating participants.

Contact information is included so advisers can get assistance with customized prospecting reports, review Form 5500 filings with the Internal Revenue Service, and schedule a meeting with one of The Hartford’s 94 retirement sales directors.

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The Form 5500 must be filed annually by employers to record operational and financial information about their 401(k) plan, including data about employee contributions, participation levels, and how assets within the plan are invested.


More information is available at

More information is available at www.thehartford.com.

 

Adviser Charged with Selling Phony TARP Investment

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is going after an investment adviser who allegedly defrauded clients by saying they were investing in the federal government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).

The SEC said in a release Wednesday that it took emergency action to charge Nashville, Tennessee-based investment adviser Gordon Grigg and his firm ProTrust Management, Inc., with securities fraud. The agency obtained a court order freezing the firm’s assets.

Grigg allegedly defrauded clients out of at least $6.5 million and misrepresented that their money was invested in TARP and other securities that do not exist, according to the SEC. Grigg and his firm are not registered with the SEC or a state regulator.

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Grigg obtained control over funds of at least 27 clients since 2007, creating fraudulent account statements reflecting his clients’ ownership of these non-existent securities, according to the SEC. He also falsely claimed partnerships with some of the nation’s best investment firms.

In December, he told clients that ProTrust had the ability to invest client funds in government-guaranteed commercial paper and bank debt as part of the TARP program.

“As alleged in our complaint, Grigg and ProTrust preyed upon investors’ desire for safety by claiming associations with reputable investment firms and the government’s TARP program,” said Katherine Addleman, regional director of the SEC’s Atlanta Regional Office, in a statement. “Investors should carefully check any purported affiliations. In this case, not only were such claims false, but there is in fact no program in which investors can buy debt guaranteed by the TARP program.”

Grigg joins a list of advisers whose fraudulent activity has been unearthed lately (see “Mass. Broker Allegedly Scammed Investors out of $2M).

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