Equitable: financial advice out of blue

Question

I was approached out of the blue by a financial advisor from Equitable. He told me that the people from the company referred  me and that they provide free financial advice and services because they have a third party agreement with my company.  However, I must provide the values of my pension, salary, savings, stock options, etc. but I do not have to  provided the account information.  That rang so many bells:

No agreement about information protection
I must share a lot of private information
They provided only one reference and stated that they will provide more

I contacted a high level reference man in my company but his persona also looks strange. He is working for several companies.
This all looks very shady.  Is this a scam?

Philipp · Answer

It's always suspicious when someone offers you financial advise without you asking them to, and it's definitely justified to question their motives.
But it's not uncommon for companies to work together with external finance advise companies to advise their employees regarding their retirement plans. It is of course not inconceivable that a scammer tries to convince you that they have such an arrangement with your company when they in fact do not. So you might want to ask your HR department or do some research on your corporate intranet to find out if your company is indeed working together with this service provider. Do not rely on information which comes from the service provider in that regard.
But even if they are really working on behalf of your employer, then there is of course always the risk that your employer chose poorly when picking a finance advise company. So never sign anything without taking it home, reading it completely, understanding it completely and doing the math to see if it's actually a good deal for you.

Equitable: financial advice out of blue

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