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Marketing firms targeting elderly draw attention from regulators

Investment News, 3/26/07

Abstract:

Regulators are turning the spotlight on companies that specialize in using high-pressure marketing tactics to sell financial products and services to older Americans.

Some firms provide financial advisers with detailed scripts, and other marketing material, designed to intimidate -- or even deceive -- the elderly into buying annuities and other financial products. Others arm advisers with ghostwritten books that serve to position those advisers falsely as experts in financial planning for this demographic...

...While the regulator did not charge the companies with any wrongdoing, it did hold them out as examples of companies that employed "sophisticated marketing techniques ... designed to scare and manipulate seniors into purchasing annuities."

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