The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority has ordered three Advisor Group divisions, LPL Financial, MassMutual division MML Investor Services, UBS, and two divisions of Wells Fargo to pay a total of $9.5 million in restitution to clients affected by the firms' alleged failures to establish and maintain supervisory systems reasonably designed to supervise their reps' recommendations about 529 tax-advantaged education savings plans.
"LPL takes our supervisory obligations seriously," a company spokeswoman told ThinkAdvisor on Tuesday. "We have fully cooperated with FINRA throughout this industry-wide self-reporting initiative and have implemented new policies, procedures, and training to strengthen our capabilities related to this important work."
From January 2013 to March 2020, LPL allegedly failed to establish and maintain a supervisory system reasonably designed to supervise registered representatives' recommendations to clients that they roll over 529 plan investments from one state plan to another, according to a FINRA letter of acceptance, waiver and consent that Robert Pettman, LPL executive vice president-wealth management, signed Oct. 8.
"Specifically, LPL did not have policies, procedures or training regarding available sales charge waivers or special share classes that decreased the cost of 529 plan rollover transactions," according to the letter. "As a result of the foregoing, LPL violated MSRB Rule G-27."
LPL voluntarily self-reported potential issues with its supervisory system to FINRA as part of the broker-dealer self-regulating group's 529 Plan Share Class Initiative announced in Regulatory Notice 19-04 and proposed a plan to remediate affected clients, according to FINRA.
Therefore, although the AWC letter includes an order for LPL to pay restitution plus interest of $1.2 million to owners of 1,941 accounts and a censure, the firm has not been fined, FINRA pointed out.
Advisor Group's Violations
From Jan. 1, 2013, through June 30, 2018, Royal Alliance, SagePoint Financial and FSC "failed to establish and maintain a supervisory system reasonably designed to supervise 529 plan share-class recommendations in violation of MSRB Rule G-27," according to the AWC letter executives at the three Advisor Group divisions signed Oct. 29.
The three Advisor Group divisions shared written supervisory procedures that "did not reasonably address the share-class suitability factors specific to 529 plan investments," according to FINRA.
Their transaction review systems were also "not reasonably designed to identify 529 plan share-class recommendations that were inconsistent with the investment time horizon suggested by the age of the account beneficiary," FINRA said.
The three divisions "voluntarily self-reported potential issues with their supervisory system to FINRA as part of the 529 Plan Share Class Initiative … and proposed a plan to remediate affected" clients, according to FINRA.
Therefore, although the AWC letter includes a censure for each division and orders of restitution and estimated interest totaling $485,441, FINRA has not fined them, it noted.
SagePoint, however, was separately fined $700,000 by FINRA for allegedly failing to establish and maintain a supervisory system, including written supervisory procedures reasonably designed to supervise reps with histories of industry and regulatory-related misconduct, according to an AWC letter signed by FINRA on Friday. SagePoint accepted and consented to FINRA's findings without admitting or denying those findings.
Advisor Group did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the 529 Plan sanctions.
