Early Case Assessment
Bates Group provides early case assessment support during the pre-litigation phase of a matter. Our team of consultants, experts, and analysts examine the issues and data, providing relevant context, experience, analysis and analytics around them, for presentation back to the client. We work with our clients to create customized, efficient, and cost effective analyses that allow them to gather actionable information without incurring the full costs of developing trial worthy profit and loss demonstratives.
Understanding the depth of exposure to any given issue early on can help your company or client minimize that exposure and navigate decisions about the optimal course of action counsel and management may take, including how to address the specific complaint they have received, whether or not they need to proactively contact any other parties that may have been affected by the same issue, and whether or not they need to disclose the issue to regulators.
Guided by Experience
Bates Early Case Assessment allows your company, or your client, to benefit from our experience. In many cases, while the issue may be new to the company seeking our services, we may have consulted another financial institution on the same issue before. We provide guidance to our clients on how to resolve these matters, as well as insight into what other actions were generated (an arbitration, regulatory investigation, etc.) by the issue (or similar issues).
Beyond Early Case Assessment
Should the complaint progress into an arbitration proceeding or a regulatory investigation, having already used Bates for early case assessment will be a substantial benefit during the life cycle of your legal matter. Having the consultant or expert’s viewpoint early on, and any analysis or narrative work that we have already performed, can be used and built upon, in the subsequent proceedings. Knowing the facts, and having numbers on hand, can provide great value in successfully resolving complaints and subsequent actions.
Case Example - Mutual Funds
Retained on behalf of the regulatory division of a major broker/dealer to respond to an SEC inquiry that focused on the investments in a group of mutual funds. Spanning 30 funds that were traded across 1,200 accounts, we traced the P/(L) on the 1,000+ purchases that were at issue. Allocating the trading and account transfer activity between those purchases/sales which were at issue (as opposed to those which were not) proved to be the paramount task. With the assistance of our in‐house programming team and the use of our proprietary programs, we were able to successfully navigate through the hundreds of thousands of lines of transactions to ultimately arrive at a clear and concise summary with which our client was able to respond.
Case Example - Annuity Switches
Retained to assist inside counsel of a large independent broker‐dealer and RIA custodian to respond to a State regulatory inquiry related to annuity switches. We assisted counsel by providing an independent review of each annuity switch and providing an analysis of hypothetical contract value and living benefits assuming the original contract had continued to be in force and not exchanged.