Enforcement Actions
Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA)
CASES OF NOTE
2011
NOTE: Stipulations of Fact and Consent to Penalty (SFC); Offers of Settlement (OS); and Letters of Acceptance Waiver, and Consent (AWC) are entered into by Respondents without admitting or denying the allegations, but consent is given to the described sanctions & to the entry of findings. Additionally, for AWCs, if FINRA has reason to believe a violation has occurred and the member or associated person does not dispute the violation, FINRA may prepare and request that the member or associated person execute a letter accepting a finding of violation, consenting to the imposition of sanctions, and agreeing to waive such member's or associated person's right to a hearing before a hearing panel, and any right of appeal to the National Adjudicatory Council, the SEC, and the courts, or to otherwise challenge the validity of the letter, if the letter is accepted. The letter shall describe the act or practice engaged in or omitted, the rule, regulation, or statutory provision violated, and the sanction or sanctions to be imposed.
NFP Securities, Inc.
AWC/2007011393902

The Firm approved advertising materials a registered representative used in his retail equity-indexed annuity (EIA) business conducted at workshops for senior citizens that contained false, exaggerated, unwarranted or misleading statements. The firm failed to document, with a principal’s signature or initial, its approval of a piece of advertising material the representative used and failed to maintain a record of its approval of a piece of the representative’s advertising material.

The firm did not supervise the representative’s workshops, in that it did not require him to produce a copy of the script for the workshops and did not attend any of the live workshops to confirm that the contents of the workshops complied with NASD rules and that only firm-approved materials were being used. If the firm had required the representative to submit a script and had attended his workshops, it would have discovered that he made statements, used materials and engaged in conduct that violated NASD Rules 2110 and 2210, and could have prevented further violations of these rules.

NFP Securities, Inc. : Censured; Fined $50,000
Tags: Scripts  EIA  
Bill Singer's Comment

I largely concur with the allegations and sanctions; however, I don't agree that the Firm needs to attend all of its representatives' workshops to confirm that they are compliant.  To FINRA's credit, the allegations notes that the Firm did not have a supervisor "attend any of the live workshops," so the SRO did not suggest that "all" workshops needed to be supervised. Frankly, that could get a bit cost prohibitive and strikes me as a bit over the top in terms of a practical approach to compliance.  I'm not suggesting that having a firm representative attend all workshops isn't a good idea, but there are many "good ideas" that we could employ in all walks of life that are just financially prohibitive.  If random attendance by compliance staff is acceptable as a means of keeping employees honest, then I wholeheartedly support that approach. 

A takeaway from this case would be for Compliance Departments to set up a schedule whereby some supervisor is required to attend at least one out of every X workshops conducted with a standard period of months to ensure some reasonable random effort to verify compliance.

Enforcement Actions
Search in Cases of Note : FINRA
Months
 
Cases of Note : FINRA Archive
Tags