With the economy on a rocky footing, the climate is right for investment scams. These scams can impact investors of all ages, but those hit hardest are the seniors. Often isolated and suffering a diminishing capacity to discern truth from lies, elderly investors are particularly vulnerable to clever investment scams that promise high returns for low or no risk.
FINRA Fines Firms for Failing to "Know Your Customer"
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) sanctioned Citigroup Global Markets, J.P. Morgan Securities, LPL Financial, Morgan Stanley Smith Barney and Merrill Lynch for failure to ensure compliance with FINRA Rule 2090 “Know Your Customer” rule, dealing with custodial accounts. The Rule requires member firms and their associated representatives to use reasonable diligence to determine the “essential facts” about each customer and “the authority of each person acting on behalf of such customer.”
FINRA Disciplinary Action Report: Dec 2019
Each month, the agency that regulates the financial industry, FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority), produces a detailed report that runs down all disciplinary actions recently taken against brokerage firms and brokers. We strongly encourage any investor who suspects their broker and/or broker-dealer of having lost them money on dubious terms to at least skim this report to see if you recognize any names, schemes, products, or securities.
FINRA: Suitability and Sales Practice Issues Linger
Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Inc (FINRA) released its “2019 Report on Examination Findings and Observations”, in October 2019. The report reflected key finding/observations identified in FINRA’s recent examinations of broker-dealers and practices FINRA deems to be effective in helping firms improve their compliance and risk management programs. In this article, we summarize aspects of FINRA’s report, relevant to the structured products industry.
Unpaid Arbitration Awards Plague Industry
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Inc (FINRA)., along with the rest of the securities industry, is staring at a fresh wave of unpaid and embarrassing arbitration awards against it. Arb awards go unpaid when investors win lawsuits against broker-dealers that sold them unsuitable, faulty or troubled products only to see the B-Ds go belly up and run out of money before they can pay investor damages.
FINRA Disciplinary Action Report: Nov 2019
Each month, the agency that regulates the financial industry, FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority), produces a detailed report that runs down all disciplinary actions recently taken against brokerage firms and brokers. We strongly encourage any investor who suspects their broker and/or broker-dealer of having lost them money on dubious terms to at least skim this report to see if you recognize any names, schemes, products, or securities.
Brokers Gaming Background Check System
Unfortunately for investors looking to background check their broker, financial advisors are appealing to FINRA for the purging of key information on these reports in record numbers. This is supposed to be a rare step. It completely erases any trace of misdoing that might have blighted an advisor’s permanent record.
FINRA Disciplinary Action Report: Oct 2019
Each month, the agency that regulates the financial industry, FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority), produces a detailed report that runs down all disciplinary actions recently taken against brokerage firms and brokers. We strongly encourage any investor who suspects their broker and/or broker-dealer of having lost them money on dubious terms to at least skim this report to see if you recognize any names, schemes, products, or securities.
FINRA Disciplinary Action Report: Sept 2019
Each month, the agency that regulates the financial industry, FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority), produces a detailed report that runs down all disciplinary actions recently taken against brokerage firms and brokers. We strongly encourage any investor who suspects their broker and/or broker-dealer of having lost them money on dubious terms to at least skim this report to see if you recognize any names, schemes, products, or securities.
Investment Scams Target Elderly Investors
With the economy on a rocky footing, the climate is right for investment scams. These scams can impact investors of all ages, but those hit hardest are the seniors. Often isolated and suffering a diminishing capacity to discern truth from lies, elderly investors are particularly vulnerable to clever investment scams that promise high returns for low or no risk.
FINRA Disciplinary Action Report: August 2019
Each month, the agency that regulates the financial industry, FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority), produces a detailed report that runs down all disciplinary actions recently taken against brokerage firms and brokers. We strongly encourage any investor who suspects their broker and/or broker-dealer of having lost them money on dubious terms to at least skim this report to see if you recognize any names, schemes, products, or securities.
Investors: Ask These Five Questions
We are often asked how investors can best protect themselves against unscrupulous financial advisors and toxic investments. The truth is, most investors simply don’t ask the right questions before they sign on with a broker or put their hard-earned money into the next hot complex investment product. These five questions will at least give you a measure of protection against the worse depredations of the securities industry.
Investors Awarded $1.16M for REIT Sales
In a case that points up many of the problems that have been plaguing the securities industry for years, a FINRA panel of arbitrators awarded six investors more than $1M in relief after they alleged that a financial advisor and three executives for Berthel Fisher & Co sold them unsuitable complex products.
FINRA Disciplinary Action Report: July 2019
Each month, the agency that regulates the financial industry, FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority), produces a detailed report that runs down all disciplinary actions recently taken against brokerage firms and brokers. We strongly encourage any investor who suspects their broker and/or broker-dealer of having lost them money on dubious terms to at least skim this report to see if you recognize any names, schemes, products, or securities.
Can I Trust My Broker?
FINRA Disciplinary Action Report: June 2019
Each month, the agency that regulates the financial industry, FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority), produces a detailed report that runs down all disciplinary actions recently taken against brokerage firms and brokers. We strongly encourage any investor who suspects their broker and/or broker-dealer of having lost them money on dubious terms to at least skim this report to see if you recognize any names, schemes, products, or securities.
Unit Investment Trusts May Present Opportunity for Churning
At the end of the maturity period of a Unit Investment Trust, you and your financial advisor may decide to rollover the investment into a new UIT. While this is a perfectly legitimate transaction, it also opens up the opportunity for an unscrupulous broker to rollover the investment more than once — perhaps many times.
When this excessive rolling-over of a UITs is done to gain a financial advisor illegitimate fees, it’s called churning. Churning is considered a form of misconduct and may open a financial advisor up to regulatory action, fines, and disbarment from FINRA.
What Happens When Your Broker Leaves a Firm
As an investor, you may have already experienced the disorientation that comes with having your financial advisor switch from one broker-dealer to another; or to an investment advisory or insurance company. The practice is not at all common, and the reasons for such switches are by no means always a bad thing for investors. Often a high-performing broker will be poached from a smaller firm by a larger one; or an ambitious broker will move from one company to another because of the higher quality of support, compliance, and information offered at another shop. That’s all well and good — but where does it leave the investor?
FINRA Compiles List of "Bad Brokers"
As the securities industry regulator, FINRA, looks at new ways of cleaning up the brokerage business, it has zeroed in on “rogue brokers” as being responsible for a disproportionate number of infractions and instances of misconduct. FINRA has been motivating a new rule that would target a few hundred individual brokers who have checkered backgrounds by forcing firms that employ them to heighten supervision of high-risk financial professionals.
FINRA Disciplinary Action Report: May 2019
Each month, the agency that regulates the financial industry, FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority), produces a detailed report that runs down all disciplinary actions recently taken against brokerage firms and brokers. We strongly encourage any investor who suspects their broker and/or broker-dealer of having lost them money on dubious terms to at least skim this report to see if you recognize any names, schemes, products, or securities.