AAG Capital’s supervisors approved 41 investment swap deals and never once required documentation explaining why ripping apart a customer’s existing retirement protection was actually good for that customer.

That is the finding at the center of a FINRA enforcement action signed on May 9, 2025 by AAG Capital President Gregg Guinta and accepted by FINRA on May 20, 2025. The firm, headquartered in Wesley Chapel, Florida, has operated as a FINRA member since 1962. It sells private placement securities, mutual funds, and a specific type of complex annuity product called a Registered Index-Linked Annuity, or RILA, to everyday retail investors through 35 registered representatives.

A RILA is an annuity whose returns are pegged to a market index. It can cap how much you gain and limit how much you lose, and it comes with structures that even experienced investors find complicated. AAG Capital’s entire annuity business from February 2021 onward consisted exclusively of selling RILAs from three issuers. That concentration made ironclad oversight rules more critical, not less. AAG Capital chose less.

The Numbers They Hoped You Wouldn’t Add Up

Between February 2021 and April 2023, AAG Capital recommended 479 RILA purchases representing more than $92 million in principal ($92 million; more than the entire annual budget of many small American towns). Of those 479 transactions, 41 were exchanges where a customer surrendered an existing annuity, life insurance policy, or variable annuity to fund the switch into a RILA. Those 41 exchanges represented more than $7.9 million in principal ($7.9 million; enough to fully pay off the median American home mortgage for roughly 60 families).

Of those 41 exchanges, 19 resulted in a customer giving up real, documented protections: death benefits, living benefit riders, or incurring hard surrender charges. These were not hypothetical losses. They were measurable, documented, and according to FINRA, foreseeable. AAG Capital’s supervisors reviewed these deals and approved them anyway, without requiring the documentation that would have shown why the tradeoffs made sense for the customer.

Surrender Charges Paid by Eight Real People

The following chart shows the exact surrender charge each of the eight affected customers paid. These are the dollar amounts regulators confirmed were taken from customer accounts during a period when AAG Capital’s supervisory system failed to catch or question a single one of them.

Customer 4 alone absorbed $22,077 ($22,077; more than five months of rent for the average American renter) in surrender charges. That single transaction accounts for more than 57% of the total restitution ordered across all eight customers. The supervisory review that waved this transaction through without adequate documentation review is, per FINRA’s findings, not an aberration. It was the system operating exactly as AAG Capital designed it.

The Non-Financial Ledger: What the Spreadsheet Can’t Capture

Six people walked into a meeting with an AAG Capital representative and walked out having surrendered a life insurance policy worth more in death benefit than they received in cash. Read that again. They gave up a guarantee that their family would receive a payout upon their death in exchange for a product whose returns depend on market index performance during a set investment term. Some of these death benefit losses exceeded the surrender value by more than $100,000 ($100,000; more than the median American household earns in an entire year of work).

These are not abstract numbers on a compliance checklist. A death benefit is a specific promise made to a specific family. It is the safety net that keeps a spouse in their home, keeps children in school, keeps a household from collapsing the moment a breadwinner dies. AAG Capital’s representatives recommended that these customers trade that promise away, and the firm’s supervisors signed off without documentation showing why the customer’s specific situation made that trade a good idea.

Fifteen more customers surrendered fixed or variable annuities that carried optional benefit riders: living benefit guarantees that promise a minimum income stream the customer cannot outlive, or enhanced death benefits that had accumulated value above the base contract. These riders have real, compounding worth that grows over time. The FINRA document notes that some of these riders had “accrued value exceeding the contract value.” AAG Capital’s supervisory review failed to require a reckoning of what those riders were actually worth before the firm approved the swap.

Then there are the eight customers who paid surrender charges totaling $38,591.39 ($38,591.39; roughly nine months of rent for the average American renter, or more than the annual income of a full-time minimum wage worker in most U.S. states) directly out of their retirement savings. Surrender charges are penalties imposed for cashing out an insurance or annuity product before its term ends. These fees exist to discourage early exits because insurance companies price products assuming long holding periods. When a broker recommends a swap that triggers these fees, the customer absorbs the loss immediately and permanently. FINRA found that AAG Capital’s system failed to ensure supervisors identified these charges as red flags requiring follow-up before approving the exchanges.

Legal Receipts: Straight From the Document

These are direct quotations and findings from the FINRA Letter of Acceptance, Waiver, and Consent. Nothing is paraphrased. This is what regulators put in writing.

“From February 2021 through the present, AAG Capital’s Reg BI-related written policies and procedures were not tailored to address recommendations of a complex product that comprised a significant component of its revenue and the entirety of its annuity business.” FINRA AWC, Facts and Violative Conduct Section

“The firm’s written policies and procedures also failed to describe the steps that supervisors must take when reviewing whether recommendations to exchange another insurance product for a RILA were in the customer’s best interest, taking into consideration the disadvantages of the exchange, such as the loss of a living benefit or death benefit, or the imposition of surrender fees.” FINRA AWC, Facts and Violative Conduct Section

“The documentation for these exchanges submitted for supervisory review, which included some comparative disclosures that were limited in scope, did not include information sufficient to determine why the customers would benefit from the recommended RILA despite certain disadvantages arising from the surrender of the customer’s existing investment, including the relinquishment of death benefits or income riders, or the incurrence of surrender charges.” FINRA AWC, Facts and Violative Conduct Section

“The firm’s supervisory system also failed to ensure that the firm and its supervisors reasonably identified and followed up on red flags, such as patterns of customers relinquishing riders and benefits and incurring surrender charges as a result of exchange recommendations.” FINRA AWC, Facts and Violative Conduct Section

“Rule 15l-1(a)(1) of Reg BI requires a broker, dealer, or a natural person associated with a broker or dealer, when making a recommendation of any securities transaction or investment strategy involving securities to a retail customer, to act in the best interest of that retail customer at the time the recommendation is made, without placing the financial or other interest of the broker, dealer, or associated person ahead of the interest of the retail customer.” FINRA AWC, Legal Standard Cited

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The Settlement Lets Them Say Nothing Wrong Happened

AAG Capital signed this AWC without admitting or denying the findings. The firm paid a $100,000 fine ($100,000; roughly what it costs to send four students through one year of public university) and agreed to pay $38,591.39 in restitution to eight customers. FINRA additionally requires that a senior management principal certify within 180 days that the supervisory system has been fixed. The 15 customers who surrendered living benefit or death benefit riders receive no restitution under this order. The settlement text explicitly states: “The imposition of a restitution order or any other monetary sanction in this AWC… does not preclude customers from pursuing their own actions to obtain restitution or other remedies.”

If you or someone you know exchanged an annuity or life insurance policy through AAG Capital after February 2021, you retain the right to pursue your own legal action. FINRA BrokerCheck is free and public. A securities attorney consultation is the next step. Mutual aid networks for seniors facing financial exploitation exist in every state through the CFPB’s network of financial counselors for older Americans. Local organizing through consumer rights coalitions and senior advocacy groups, particularly in Florida, can push state regulators to act on patterns that federal enforcement lets slide. The settlement is a floor, not a ceiling.