On Wednesday, the FINRA Board met and discussed two topics that I recently blogged about: recidivist brokers and unpaid arbitration awards. In predictable fashion, FINRA withered in the face of criticism that its existing rules and policies are somehow not tough enough on its member firms, and embarked on a proposed series of steps
Arbitration
Puerto Rico Customer Arbitrations: The Untold Story About Why So Many Settle
By Chris Seps on
Here is a piece from Chris Seps, who has a bit of a reputation around here for being angry. Judge for yourself. But, for what it’s worth, I do want to say that I have had the pleasure of being involved in several cases in which the subject of this post, Dr. Craig McCann, appeared…
Pick Your Poison: Given What A Jury Can Do, Is Arbitration Really That Bad?
By UB Greensfelder on
Posted in Arbitration, FINRA
Some of my clients simply cannot enough bad things about the arbitration process. It is expensive. It is unfair. There’s no industry panelist anymore. Claimants can get away with anything. Panels are sometimes comprised of people who care more about how many sessions they can get paid for than the merits of the case. Or…
Altering Documents In A FINRA Arbitration Can Have Consequences That Go Well Beyond The Arbitration Itself…At Least For Respondents
By UB Greensfelder on
The FINRA investigative process and the arbitration process exist side-by-side; at times, the misconduct that is alleged by a claimant in a Statement of Claim may simultaneously be the subject of an examination by Member Regulation, or even an Enforcement Complaint. Ordinarily, Enforcement doesn’t pay much attention to what happens in a parallel arbitration, except…
A Miscellany Of FINRA Issues A Little Too Big To Call Nitpicking
By UB Greensfelder on
For some reason, a bunch of noteworthy events all happened around the same time this week, so please bear with me as I vent a little about them. Individually, they are irritating; in the aggregate, they are borderline alarming.
First, the FINRA Wells process. I have blogged about this before, and how, in a…
PIABA Cries Wolf, Again, To Ensure That Its Lawyers Get Paid
By UB Greensfelder on
Once again, I found myself gritting my teeth in frustration after reading yet another PIABA report complaining about some perceived inequity in the FINRA arbitration process that cuts against customers. This week, PIABA released its study demonstrating that sometimes when claimants prevail in arbitrations against broker-dealers, the BD that lost is unable to pay the…
FINRA’s Arbitration Task Force Issues Its Final Report: Law Shmaw
By UB Greensfelder on
Posted in Arbitration, FINRA
Back when I was a Director of NASD’s Atlanta District Office, I spent a lot of my time apologizing to the approximately 500 member firms my office regulated about the quality of the arbitration process. Almost uniformly, broker-dealers held the view that it was not just flawed but broken, that it was unfair (tilted in…
The Devil Is In The Details When It Comes To Enforcing Arbitration Agreements With Registered Reps
By UB Greensfelder on
It should be abundantly clear to everyone that BDs are required to arbitrate disputes with their registered reps. There are several reasons I can assert this with such a great deal of certainty. First, and most obvious, there is a rule about it. Rule 13200(a) of the Code of Arbitration Procedure provides that
[e]xcept as…
Correlation DOES NOT Equal Causation: PIABA’s Ongoing Quest to Sully the Reputation of Financial Advisors
By UB Greensfelder on
Posted in Arbitration, Expungement
Today, the Public Investors Arbitration Bar Association (PIABA) published another hit piece on the expungement process. For those of you interested, you can find it HERE. Again and again, PIABA issues press releases and reports contending that the expungement process is broken because expungement is granted at an “alarmingly high rate.” Let’s start with…
NASAA’s Model Fee Disclosure Template: Welcome, Regulators, To My World, Where Customers Read Nothing, But Without Consequences
By UB Greensfelder on
Yesterday, NASAA released a Model Fee Disclosure Template for broker-dealers, urging firms voluntarily to adopt the model as a means of clearly disclosing to customers and prospective customers the types and amounts of various miscellaneous fees that BDs ordinarily charge their customers. Working with FINRA, SIFMA, the FSI, LPL Financial LLC, Morgan Stanley Smith Barney…