Bulinski made unsuitable recommendations to her elderly clients to purchase variable annuities. She repeatedly failed to tailor her recommendations to meet her customers’ individual investment needs, and instead recommended the same variable annuity to her customers, irrespective of age, investment experience, liquidity needs, financial situation and risk tolerance.
Bulinski recommended that elderly customers purchase the same variable annuity with an enhanced death benefit rider, but demonstrated that she did not have reasonable basis for her recommendation because some of the customers were too old to purchase the rider and the rest gained little, if any, benefit from the rider while paying a substantial cost for it. Bulinski recommended unsuitable variable annuities with a rider that was inconsistent with her customers’ investment objectives. In numerous instances, Bulinski demonstrated that she did not understand the variable annuity and inaccurately described the investment to a customer as a fixed annuity rather than a variable annuity, and with other customers, incorrectly stated the surrender period and surrender charges her customers would incur.
Bulinski was the subject of several written customer complaints about her lack of disclosure about surrender charges and other product details.