Structured products are marketed on their upside — principal protection, enhanced yield, defined outcomes — and sold on complexity most investors were never in a position to evaluate. When the risk was misrepresented, the product was unsuitable, or the downside was never disclosed, the loss can be the basis of a claim against the firm that sold it.
A structured note is a debt instrument whose return is tied to the performance of an underlying asset, subject to a payoff formula set by the issuer. The features that make them profitable to sell are the features that produce claims.
'Principal-protected' and 'buffered' notes sold as safe when they exposed the investor to issuer default, market declines beyond the buffer, or loss of principal entirely — a misrepresentation or omission of material fact.
Complex payoff structures, caps, knock-in barriers, and autocall features sold to investors who could not evaluate them and for whom the product never fit under the suitability and best-interest standards.
Portfolios loaded with structured notes from a single issuer or a single strategy, compounding issuer credit risk and illiquidity in accounts that needed neither.
Embedded fees, issuer estimated value well below the price paid, and the absence of a real secondary market — costs and constraints the customer was never clearly told about.
Structured-product claims are documented from the offering materials and the firm's own sales and marketing record, measured against what the investor was told and what the investor needed.
The pricing supplement and term sheet define the payoff, the caps, the barriers, the issuer estimated value, and the credit risk — often disclosing risks the sales conversation glossed over.
Firm-approved marketing, illustrations, and communications that framed the product as safer or simpler than its own documents show it to be.
The objectives, liquidity needs, and risk tolerance that make a complex, illiquid, issuer-dependent note unsuitable for this investor.
The share of the portfolio in structured products and the firm's supervision of a complex-product program that its own procedures were required to control.
Initial inquiries are reviewed personally and treated as confidential whether or not we ultimately work together. We respond to substantive case inquiries within one business day. There is no cost or obligation associated with the initial review.
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