Orphan Accounts

Orphan accounts, what does that mean you say? Well surprisingly this happens more than you would think. You have an investment vehicle or product or something that you once started a relationship with somebody and now that individual or company is no longer there or no longer servicing that account. Or maybe you’ve moved and just never had a new relationship. So you have this investment product, let’s call it that has really no Advisor that’s assisting you. Oftentimes we see this happen in like the insurance industry as an example. Maybe you bought a fixed annuity or a fixed index or variable or some type of annuity or insurance product at once and that insurance producer Agent is either no longer doing this or has moved or you’ve moved. And so you don’t have anybody helping you. Well oftentimes, annually there’s either reallocations or maybe this thing has matured or looking at fees and all that sort of stuff. So kind of you have a ship, but nobody is driving that ship with that in particular investment. Or even oftentimes, even surprisingly we see this with various investment accounts out there that maybe even have mutual funds or other types of active investments where maybe they’re going up and down in value and there’s not necessary an Advisor. They got put into a “house” account, oftentimes it’s called. And so maybe you didn’t even know that or oftentimes. So when you’re looking at your statement, what usually no matter what the investment is, it’s usually going to have off to one side or the other, it will say like your investment representative or your agent or something along those lines. And it’s going to list a company or individual or something like that. If it doesn’t list anybody and you haven’t had communication with those individuals or some individual for sometime, maybe that’s a concern. There’s a couple of different things you can do to know if you have been orphaned from that particular thing. You can call the company directly and ask if you have an Agent or Advisor assigned to you. Or we’re happy to take a look at that as well. We can usually tell by the statement or at a minimum it’s a quick conference call with you and us on the phone to that company and we can then determine if we have somebody there to help. But once again, don’t think that you don’t need somebody because usually at some point in the time, you’re going to want service on that. And it’s nice to have a local person to be able to help walk through that with you. Make adjustments if needed or maybe eventually you’re going to get to retirement and you want to start taking income from that or start taking distributions. You know sure, you can probably call the 1-800 number and request the paperwork and they can send it to you or fax it to you and go along that line. But once again, you know having that local individual. And maybe more importantly we talk about it all the time here on the show, is how does that investment fit into your plan. If there’s not even an Advisor looking after that, boy that to me concerns me because what is that doing? How is it making that plan for you? And how is it helping you plan to retire well? Give us a call on the screen. We’d love to talk to you about this or anything else that you may have questions about for your retirement.