1 /5 WJ BW: If you expect your financial advisor to provide honest explanations of the choices he has made in managing your accounts, I could not recommend The Osborn Group in general nor Ryan Osborn in particular. By his own estimation we are paying about $5,000 a year in fees. For those who may think that what I’m about to report is exaggerated, everything that follows is verifiable through the emails he has sent us.
I will start with what I consider to be the most “unusual” occurrences—asking another employee of Morgan Stanley to impersonate a Compliance Officer on two separate occasions.
Last year, my father-in-law died in February and my mother-in-law in October. Each of them had two Morgan Stanley accounts managed by Ryan Osborn. As we looked at the statements for these accounts, many questions arose. His evasiveness and highly unorthodox business practices sparked our curiosity. My mother-in-law was 79 years old and unfamiliar with finance. She had found dealing with Ryan to be very stressful and so she gave my wife her power of attorney in order to try to get some answers from him. (Among other things, Ryan would make special trips to her mother’s home with “papers to sign” which he neither explained to her *nor did he leave any copies with her.* His excuse for this highly unusual activity was that he did “not bring a copier with him”.)
Finally, Ryan came up with a “solution”. He proposed in writing that we would all have a conference call with a “Compliance Officer.” Morgan Stanley has a Compliance Division that monitors whether the laws protecting clients’ rights are being followed. They also have a Risk Department which assesses risk to Morgan Stanley itself.
On two separate occasions, several months apart, Ryan assured us that we would be talking to a Compliance Officer. In fact, he had arranged for a different Risk Officer to *pose* as a Compliance Officer during the calls. As I pointed out to Ryan, this is not the action of someone with nothing to hide. Several key questions regarding Ryan’s responsibility to us as his clients have yet to be answered:
>>Why does a financial advisor have the need to twice set up fraudulent conference calls misrepresenting the interests and authority of the Morgan Stanley representatives on the call?
>>Why does he pretend not to understand fundamental accounting principles in responding to questions from clients? Ryan’s spreadsheets are prepared with dates, descriptions and amounts *all in the same cell*. This, he argues, is the standard method -- putting the elements in separate cells so they can be analyzed is, according to Ryan, “highly unusual” and something he cannot do without the approval of others at Morgan Stanley.
>>Why does he not develop and communicate to his clients an actual investment strategy that he can explain? Instead, he becomes defensive and “pivots” when asked to explain the plan which performed so dismally during an extended period of record highs in the market.
>>Why would anyone abruptly visit an elderly client at her home and present her with documents to sign--without explanation—and without preparing a copy for the client to keep?
I would certainly recommend that before doing business with *any* Morgan Stanley branch, potential investors obtain a sample of their Monthly Statement. It is remarkable for several reasons. The Instructions for Reading these Statements is, itself, 23 pages long, yet it does not provide individual figures for the information that investors need to compare and evaluate performance.
A. There is no figure reported for the Rate of Return for the period so that performance can be compared with other companies.
B. There are no figures that report the true amount of fees and charges made against the account.
Look over the sample statement and then imagine getting tricks and evasiveness instead of straight answers from your broker.
If you value transparency, I would advise choosing someone other than the Osborn Group.
