Enforcement Actions
Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA)
RESEARCH and ADVERTISING
2010
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.
February 2010 - View all for this month
Eric Lowell Small (Principal)
AWC/2007007345601
While associated with his former member firm as a registered principal but not registered as a research analyst or a research principal, Small supervised the conduct of the firm’s research analysts, including approving research reports they prepared and that his firm issued.

Small failed to establish and maintain adequate supervisory procedures concerning the review of
  • email correspondence,
  • incoming and outgoing hard copy correspondence at the firm’s branch offices that he was in charge of, and
  • outside investment activity of registered representatives at the firm.
The Firm's procedures indicated that a supervisory principal must review all correspondence, but these procedures were not reasonably designed to achieve compliance with applicable securities laws, regulations and FINRA rules. The procedures were inadequate in that they contained insufficient detail concerning how and when such reviews were to occur, and the firm had no written supervisory procedures addressing the review of outside brokerage accounts. Small failed to establish, maintain and enforce adequate written supervisory control procedures relating to
  • NASD Rule 3012(a)(2)(B) and its requirement that members establish, maintain and enforce procedures reasonably designed to review and monitor transmittals of funds or securities between customers and registered representatives, and
  • NASD Rule 3012(a)(2)(C) and its requirement of an analysis and determination of whether producing branch office managers should have been subjected to heightened supervision.
Eric Lowell Small (Principal): Fined $17,500; Suspended 10 business days in Principal capacity only
Bill Singer's Comment
A well-presented case and a timely warning.  First off, many firms simply patched together a supervisory system because some veteran left or someone was supposed to implement more specific policies (or hire another Principal) and, well, you know how those things tend to dribble away and get forgotten.  Next thing you know, FINRA comes in and -- OMG!, we forgot to take care of this!!

I urge all my clients to pick at least an annual date when they give their policies and procedures a "cold review;" i.e., you take a rule and literally go line by line through your WSPs, memos, and other policies and confirm that what's written is what is in effect.  Concurrent with that run-through, you should also confirm that you are up-to-date with any new or amended rules.  Similarly, confirm that all folks who require a specific registration are duly registered (you would be surprised how often it's "assumed" that a registration application went through only to learn the FINRA shows no record of the filing -- or that someone was supposed to sit for an exam but postponed it and never satisfied the requirement.

All of which leads to another punchlist item:  If you have set forth policies and procedures in writing, are they being observed?  It's bad enough to run afoul of a FINRA rule, but to impose upon yourself a given task (which FINRA staff will note in your WSPs) and then to not properly implement that task is idiotic.  Similarly, as so many in-house Compliance folks love to spend hours on the computer drawing up all sorts of fancy organizational charts showing who reports to whom, it's probably a good idea to actually look at those charts once in a while and make sure that everyone so listed is still working at your firm and still supervising or reporting to those designated.
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