Oliver
Trust, fiduciary claims and conflicts of interest
We engaged LifeWealth believing we were entering into a holistic, fiduciary relationship focused on our family’s long-term financial future. Trust was a major part of how that relationship was cultivated, including through Christian values and professional credentials that reinforced our belief that our interests came first. Our experience since has been profoundly disappointing. We proceeded with a variable life insurance policy carrying an annual premium of approximately $90,000. Only after concerns arose did we come to understand the magnitude of the compensation associated with the recommendation, including tens of thousands of dollars of upfront compensation and further compensation over time. We were also presented with another policy of similar scale. Whatever disclosures may have existed within the paperwork, the magnitude of these financial incentives and the conflicts they created were never explained to us in a way that made us understand what those recommending these products stood to receive. Had we understood that clearly, it would have materially affected our decision-making. We have also subsequently reviewed the standards associated with the Christian financial-adviser credentials prominently used in the relationship. In our opinion, the level of transparency we experienced around compensation and conflicts was very difficult to reconcile with the standards and values we understood those credentials to represent. Perhaps most troubling, one of the entities involved later acknowledged that agreed financial-planning deliverables had not been provided. Yet major financial recommendations had nevertheless been made during that planning relationship. We still do not understand how recommendations of this magnitude could properly be reached when agreed underlying planning work had not been delivered. The response to our subsequent, detailed and documented concerns has been extraordinary. Rather than the unified relationship we believed we had entered into, responses came through multiple separate entities, compliance functions and lawyers, with distinctions about responsibilities and capacities that had never been clear to us while the recommendations were being made. We were repeatedly encouraged to place enormous trust in this relationship. We did. Our experience has left us believing that anyone considering LifeWealth should ask very specific questions, in writing, about exactly who is acting as their fiduciary at every stage, when they are not acting as a fiduciary, how much every person and entity stands to earn from each recommended product, what alternatives were considered, and whether the underlying financial planning has actually been completed before implementing a recommendation.