Clients win another GWG bond claim, this time against B-D

investmentnews.com:

Clients on Monday won another arbitration decision, this time for $246,000, stemming from a broker-dealer’s sale of bonds from GWG Holdings Inc., a defunct life settlement business that is now in bankruptcy.

The arbitration award, under the aegis of Finra Dispute Resolution Inc., was lost by Ages Financial Services Ltd., a small broker-dealer in suburban Boston. The panel of three arbitrators reached its decision Friday.

Client lawsuits against broker-dealers and individuals who sold the GWG L bonds appear to be working their way through Finra’s arbitration system. Just last week, a Southern California registered representative and a broker-dealer executive lost an arbitration claim of a little more than $1 million in damages to an investor who bought GWG Holdings L bonds in 2018.

About 40 broker-dealers sold close to $1.6 billion in GWG L bonds, so-called because they were backed by life settlements, before the firm declared bankruptcy last year, leaving investors in the lurch.

The arbitration panel split the award into two parts: $209,000 to Laurence Brown and various Brown family trusts, and $37,000 to Robert Mecca.

The arbitrators explained their decision by noting that “the investments were inappropriate for the Brown family,” according to the award.

Ages Financial Services “did not properly inform Brown about the risks and did not discuss alternatives that would have better protected the trusts,” according to the Finra arbitration panel. “Mecca stated that he was not properly informed about the degree of risk involved in the investment in GWG. The investments were not discussed in terms of quantitative suitability in relation to [the clients’] overall portfolios.”

In September, Ages had won an arbitration