I just received a quarterly statement from my retirement account, and there were SIGNIFICANT changes made to my account. I went to my online access and there is a record of a change to allocations/investments (8 different ‘funds’ were added to my investment/allocation list) on 2/10/17 that I DID NOT make or authorize. No money was removed…just a crazy number of changes to investments. Significant balances were removed from the funds that I have been in for a long time, and re-allocated to numerous other funds. WTH??
I always receive email and then US Mail confirmation of changes I make to my account, and no such confirmations were received, nor is there any record online of such statements/confirmation documents (there is a record there of previous changes/confirmations). My address info is correct online - no changes made there that might explain my not receiving a confirmation. I am not signed up for any automatic account balancing or auto-investment (I checked online to confirm that those had not been changed, and they have not).
I don’t know if I am the only one or not. If some system-wide issue had arisen back in early February, the company would have noticed it before now, right? Seems that someone would have checked their account online and noticed the errors. Seems like incredible poor management if this can happen to people’s accounts without anyone noticing.
Of course there is no reaching anyone by phone until Monday.
Anyone with any advice for when I am able to reach someone? I am wondering about that month-&-a-half of gains/losses since they are all based on fund allocations that I did not choose. Are they allowed to “go back” and put my account right as of 2/10/2017 so that the gains/losses will be what they should have been? Is there any way for me to figure out whether I ended up ahead or behind with respect to what the investments should have been? Is the company responsible to ‘make it right’ if these unauthorized changes caused me to lose earnings? This is just freaky.
If the account changed investment options, usually they advise well in advance what new fund choices will be substituted for old funds that are no longer being offered. I think that’s much more likely than your account being hacked and nothing taken out. Typically the FIRST thing a hacker would do is change your password, which, since you still logged in, didn’t happen.
I would check to make sure that your mailing address, email address, beneficiaries, etc are what you expect. Then call Monday, but my guess is that you’ll be told that you were contacted about changes, and if it wound up in your spam folder or otherwise not acted on, it’s on you.
You are probably right, but I have NO mail, email, or record of any notifications associated with my account online.
If I had received something in the mail and had ignored it (maybe it’s lost in a pile of college mail?!) wouldn’t there still be a record of it in my online account where all the other notifications/statements appear?
Does your online account have NO change in investment companies? I’m confused.
Look through all of your email and mail from your company. All of it. This change in funds could have been included in something you didn’t read or thought was important.
If you really think this is fraud, there should be a fraud number you can call 24/7. Keep looking for it.
@WhataProcess , do you really have no email, mailing address, phone number, etc shown in your profile? It’s unlikely, as the account has a responsibility to know who you are, and a SSN alone won’t do. Check your profile again.
I think he means he didn’t receive any notification of any changes via email. Mail, phone, etc.
Well…not that he read anyway.
To the OP. Check again carefully why you received. One of our investment companies completely changed names…it’s the same place but the names are all different on our statements.
The emails could have gone into spam, fwiw. My Fidelity account got rebalanced because the co’ (my former employer) changed its plan. I do not get paper notifications, only emails. Once I fished one out of spam.
A hacker would change the notification email address, wait the required number of days, change the bank ACH information or the mailing address for checks, and then empty the account. OP says the information is still valid.
Moving allocations around would be unusual, especially as the account was “hacked” in early February but is still showing a positive balance.
I think @IxnayBob is probably right - that I received some paper (mail) notification that I overlooked (although I have yet to locate it!)
My online account personal info is all fine. I’m usually good about paying attention to this stuff - opening the mail promptly and dealing with it. I like to choose my own investments, so would never have left it to the fund company to just give me the automatic whatever, so it just freaked me out that something so drastic happened to my account.
Less mail will be one benefit of being done with college admissions…!
Agree about changing your password and use two-factor ID, if that is available. It gives us great peace of mind!
The other year, one of my stocks split and also created a new company so I ended up with shares in the new company automatically purchased in my name plus a sale that went thru because we held shares in the original company. Thus resulted in unexpected capital gains at a time when we hadn’t planned to sell. No hacking was involved but it took me some time to figure out all that happened.
The above is one reason that I specify text notification wherever it’s allowed. Mail gets lost (I get a lot of mail addressed to neighbors, and give it to them, but I seldom get a neighbor bringing by my mail, hmmmm). Emails can get lost in the spam. But texts we receive.
I’ve had situations where the fund manager(s) (the very Big Boys, far removed from my rep or his firm) changed the master allocations, not a discretionary move on my part or by my financial guy. Most recently, I noticed these were backing down from the volume of global investments (one of my funds had included a large number of these.)
Unlike a rep transaction, I did not receive a transaction report. The change was embedded in a subsequent report.
No idea what OP will learn, but interesting.
I have had funds changed in a 401k due to my employer or previous employer choosing to change which funds were available. However, in each case I received (and noticed) a notice in advance. Also, in each case I took a quick look at information about the new funds and thought that they were reasonable replacements for the old funds.
To me this seems like the most likely explanation, except that the notice somehow got lost (a spam filter seems like a possible reason).
Is the total amount of the account still in the same ballpark as it was last time that you looked?
If this was an employer plan (401k, 403b, etc.) it is possible that it was due to a change of what funds are available, and money in the old funds was moved into the most similar new funds. But there should have been notice of such beforehand. Call and find out.
