By Jane Riley, Chief Compliance Officer
Every day, regardless of your practice, you have to make decisions that relate to ethical issues, sales practice issues, operational and administrative issues. You have to decide if you are going to follow the rules and policies or not. Bending the rules, disregarding the rules, or blatantly violating them, gives us no alternative but to terminate the registration of a representative.
Some of the most common reasons representatives get terminated for cause include:
- Altering customer documents after they have been signed by the customer
- Engaging in outside business activities that have not been approved by the firm
- Not disclosing all material information on form U4
- Using communications inappropriately
- Recommending products that are not in the best interest of the customer
- Failing to complete requirements such as continuing education, completing questionnaires, or responding to inquiries
- Directing trades without customer authorization
You can keep from becoming a terminated advisor by following some simple guidelines:
- If something doesn’t seem right, don’t do it. This applies to clients as well. If you don’t feel comfortable with them, or they don’t want to work the way you do, walk away.
- Make sure you document everything, but especially conversations with your clients or advisors.
- Maintain the correct files in your office. Everyone should have a complaint file, a correspondence file and a personnel file on themselves.
- Update us if any of your information changes. This includes financial issues and criminal as well as employment and contact information.
- Use the archived email address for correspondence with customers and other advisors.
- Make sure your business card, your email signature and your LinkedIn profile all refer to your registration with The Leaders Group.
- Never sign a document for a customer, even if they ask you to.
- Report any complaint or potential complaint to us immediately.
If ever in doubt about an action, or a transaction, don’t hesitate to call. We would much prefer to walk you through a situation and point out the potential pitfalls than to come in after and try to help you fix problems. If you aren’t sure about a rule or a policy, refer to the compliance manual or call us.
We prefer to have active financial professionals rather than fired financial professionals, so make your decisions wisely.
