Is a chief compliance officer (CCO) at a broker-dealer automatically on the hook for any regulatory mishaps at a firm? Not necessarily, says FINRA, the self-regulatory organization (SRO) for U.S. broker-dealers. FINRA officials issued a regulatory notice last month that sets out to clarify a CCO’s role. The notice focuses on the scope of Supervision… Read More >>
Alpine Securities to Appeal FINRA’s Expulsion
FINRA, the self-regulatory organization (SRO) for broker-dealers, has expelled Alpine Securities Corp. for its alleged misconduct. An attorney representing Alpine Securities, replying to questions from FTF News, took issue with FINRA’s finding, saying, “Alpine will be appealing the decision and, pursuant to applicable regulations, will continue to operate while the decision is reviewed.” Expulsion is,… Read More >>
Deutsche Bank Securities Settles Best Execution Case for $2M
FINRA, the self-regulatory organization (SRO) for broker-dealers, has hit Deutsche Bank Securities with a $2 million fine. The reason: FINRA alleges that Deutsche Bank Securities did not provide its customers with the supervisory “best execution” that FINRA’s rule 5310 calls for. Industry veterans will tell you that there was a time when regulators would have… Read More >>
SWIFT Expels Key Russian Banks as Hackers Target Wall Street
Russian President Vladimir V. Putin’s bloody invasion of Ukraine has caused the expulsion of key Russian banks from SWIFT, spurred multiple economic sanctions, and increased the chances that Russian hackers will retaliate via attacks upon financial services organizations. In response to Russia’s aggression, President Biden, European leaders, and Japan have imposed a series of global economic sanctions that… Read More >>
DTCC Launches Repo Markets Service & Other News
DTCC Treasury Kinetics Takes On Repo Market Transparency Post-trade infrastructure and systems provider DTCC is launching a service for accessing U.S. treasury transaction data, called DTCC Treasury Kinetics, which is intended to increase transparency into the repurchase agreement (repo) market, officials say. The DTCC Treasury Kinetics was crafted to deliver “comprehensive views of the repo markets… Read More >>
FINRA Alleges DriveWealth Broke Regulation SHO Rules
FINRA, the self-regulatory organization for broker-dealers, has censured and fined DriveWealth Institutional LLC, formerly known as Cuttone & Co., $100,000 for alleged violations of Regulation SHO rules. Last February, DriveWealth Holdings, Inc. acquired Cuttone & Co. and renamed it to DriveWealth Institutional. The renamed firm “specializes in execution services for institutional and broker-dealer clients. The… Read More >>
Credit Suisse Securities Settles Conflicts of Interest Case
FINRA, the financial industry’s non-profit self-regulatory authority, has fined Credit Suisse Securities $9 million for “failing to comply with securities laws and rules designed to protect investors, including the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Customer Protection Rule and FINRA rules requiring firms to disclose potential conflicts of interest when issuing research reports.” In a formulation that’s… Read More >>
Hearsay’s A.I. Tools Help Firms Cleanse Social Content
Hearsay Systems, a digital communications compliance vendor, has launched two new capabilities that use artificial intelligence (A.I.) — one to sift out inappropriate images in videos and direct messages, and another to detect offensive text— all to help financial advisors make certain their posts are compliant with regulatory and industry standards. The new features are… Read More >>
Wells Fargo Fined $2.25M for Document Storage Woes
Ironic, isn’t it, that just when cryptography enthusiasts are touting the capability of the blockchain to memorialize complex sequences of transactions, major units of a big bank find themselves in trouble over their own record-keeping? FINRA, the broker-dealer industry’s self-regulatory authority, charges Wells Fargo Clearing Services and Wells Fargo Advisors Financial Network — two units… Read More >>
AWS Outage Halted FINRA Systems on Dec. 7
Key online systems of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) were unavailable on Tuesday, Dec. 7, because of an outage at cloud computing provider Amazon Web Services (AWS) that lasted about seven hours, according to alerts from the self-regulatory organization and Amazon. AWS has become a major cloud provider for financial services firms, particularly those… Read More >>
