Key Investment Services LLC - Brooklyn, Ohio

ANDERSON W.

Mr. Parker, good morning! I find myself at the mercy of two of your employees. A Mark Williamson and a Vince Julian… April 12th 2024, I met with Vince Julian to cancel my investment, Prosperity Insurance. After trying to sell me other products I was not interested in, he assured me that day that I would shortly be receiving a check in the mail and could return to my KeyBank to access whatever form of investments I would like. My KeyBank is located at 105th and Chester Avenue. The manager is Linda Hickman who was also at the meeting April 12th, 2024. I would like to have my monies transferred or returned to me. There is much more to this story, involving a “Back Room…” etc. Thank you, Anderson Waldon…

S. M.

KeyBank (Key Investment Services) has held an IRA account in my name for some time now. I've never contracted with them, as the account I opened was owned by HSBC Bank and then sold to First Niagara before being sold to Key Bank. I worked for KeyBank when I graduated college and we all referred to it as 'Fee Bank', because they only make money out of bilking customers. Now I'm one of those customers.

I recently transferred my account to another institution to get my money out of their underperforming account and to avoid their continued fees. When the transfer was finally approved, the Key Bank rep told me there was a fee to close the account. The fee amounted to 10% of the account's contents.

As the account had been sold between banks, I've never agreed to the fee or signed any paperwork. I've never been able to access my account online either.

Lastly, when I called this morning I was also informed that the funds were sent by check. However, when I spoke to the rep previously I was never told it was going to be a check, my documents requested a wire and I wasn't informed this wasn't going to occur. KeyBank has deceptive practices and charges exorbitant fees. No one should be charged 10% of their IRA balance to transfer an account out of their institution, especially considering that the disclosure of the fee was never provided; my account was sold without my agreement to Key Bank; Key Bank offers no other option to avoid 10% of my account being taken except being forced to stay with their business; and the terms of the account weren't agreed to.

Key Bank didn't even incur the cost of wiring the funds. Steer clear of using Key's investment services or their bank.

Fred S.

I’ve always been a DIY kind of investor. When I sold a house I deposited a decent amount of money in my Key Savings account as a short term stop. I was approached about starting a managed financial account. Since I had no real experience as an investor I thought it would be nice to get some professional guidance (my parents had done quite well with their advisor). 2+ years later the account is up 9% per year on average. Not terrible on its own. However my self managed account is up 25% per year on average. Even just an S&P 500 index found would have generated around 14% on average these last two years. If you want to do better than a savings account this is okay, but for a professionally managed account I was hopeful it would have better returns then my zero experience managed accounts. Honestly it felt as if I needed to guide them, which defeated the purpose. At 1% of your balance as a yearly fee you can do much, much better. This was the Columbus, Ohio location. Just buy an index fund after a little research on the hottest sectors and check on it for 2 hours, twice a year.

Carlos J.

Worst experience ever. My personal banker in Aurora CO recommended me a lady named Amy Burhans. She "explained me " what they would do with my money to make it grow. She promised me a lot of things and never said anything about fees or losing money. I guess it was kind of my fault. I should've done some searching about investments before but Amy really convinced me with everything she said. She was like the nicest person and I really trusted her. At the end I lost almost $2000 dollars that's money that I really worked hard to get so I was really mad. I was trying to talk to Amy about what happened but she didn't work here anymore. I tried to talk to another consultants and all they said was that they couldn't do anything about it. I ended up closing all my accounts at key bank in general investments, savings and checking. Never trust these guys. I don't recommend key investment services at all.

Nenad M.

Key investments slows the process of dispersing money to beneficiaries. You would think they have never had one of their investors die. Would not recommend using them for annuities. They drag out the process for months!

M. K.

Ray and Al have both helped me out over the years. No complaints.

Tony W.

Worst investment account I’ve had.

Kyle K.

Shop around. I had money with them for 15 years and found out later I could get better returns and pay much lower fees.