FINRA Arbitration Award — March 2026
In March 2026, a FINRA arbitration panel in Seattle ruled against Truist Investment Services in the first-ever FINRA arbitration award involving Northstar Financial Services (Bermuda). If Truist — or its predecessor SunTrust — sold you Northstar products, you may have the same claim.
The Award
In March 2026, a three-member FINRA arbitration panel in Seattle ordered Truist Investment Services to pay $2,003,607 in compensatory damages to a Northstar Financial Services (Bermuda) variable account investor — plus $748,213.60 in legal fees and costs — representing the full amount of damages requested.
The panel found Truist liable for recommending Northstar products without adequate due diligence, failing to disclose material risks, and recommending products unsuitable for the investor's profile. The award included lost opportunity costs, investment returns, and attorney's fees.
This was the first FINRA arbitration award involving Northstar Financial Services (Bermuda) — establishing that U.S. broker-dealers that sold these products can be held accountable through FINRA arbitration.
Background
Truist Investment Services is the brokerage arm of Truist Financial, formed through the 2019 merger of BB&T and SunTrust Banks. Prior to the merger, the firm operated as SunTrust Investment Services. Many Northstar investors purchased their products through SunTrust advisors before the merger rebranded the firm as Truist.
Northstar Financial Services (Bermuda) products — including the Global Interest Accumulator and Global Advantage Plus — were marketed through Truist/SunTrust advisors as sophisticated, tax-advantaged offshore vehicles. Investors were often not adequately informed of the illiquid nature of the products, the offshore structure, or the risks associated with the underlying investment management.
Following Greg Lindberg's acquisition of Northstar in 2018 and the subsequent looting of assets, Northstar entered provisional liquidation in September 2020. Truist investors who had been sold these products found themselves unable to access their funds.
Your Rights
If Truist Investment Services or SunTrust Investment Services recommended Northstar products to you, you may have a FINRA arbitration claim based on one or more of the following:
Northstar products were illiquid offshore instruments. Recommending them to investors who needed liquidity or had conservative risk profiles was a FINRA suitability violation.
If your Truist advisor described these products as safe, guaranteed, or low-risk, they misrepresented material facts — a basis for a fraud claim in FINRA arbitration.
Broker-dealers were required to disclose the offshore structure, illiquidity, and the risks associated with the Greg Lindberg acquisition. Failure to do so was a breach of duty.
Truist as a firm had an independent obligation to supervise its advisors and ensure the suitability of their recommendations. The $2.75M+ award confirms the firm can be held liable.
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