More Than 60 Brokers Hit With FINRA Sanctions Over CE Cheating

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The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority has disciplined more than 60 brokers over the past several months for cheating on the state of New York’s continuing education requirements tied to the renewal of their insurance licenses, according to FINRA records.

The records show that 62 brokers, who neither admitted nor denied the regulator’s allegations, consented to sanctions and the entry of findings in which they certified that they had completed the required continuing education — 15 hours in most cases — when in fact another individual who has not yet been identified completed the training on their behalf.

Another broker-dealer employee in an unregistered role was sanctioned as well.

The brokers, disciplined starting in February for violations going back as far as 2021, received $5,000 fines and one-month suspensions.

Four other brokers have been barred from the financial industry for refusing to cooperate with FINRA’s investigation, according to Financial Planning, which first reported on the sanctions Tuesday.

One person, who has not been identified, completed the CE requirement for all the sanctioned brokers, the publication said, noting that these individuals worked for the following 15 brokerages:

Allstate Financial Securities
American Portfolios Financial Services (part of Osaic)
Ameritas Investment Co.
Cetera Advisor Networks
Concorde Investment Services
Equity Services Inc.
Hornor, Townsend & Kent (owned by Penn Mutual)
LPL Financial
MML Investors Services (owned by MassMutual)
Northwestern Mutual Investment Services
NYLife Securities
PFS Investments
Pruco Securities
Securities America (part of Osaic)
Voya Financial Advisors

BDs Respond

“The impacted Voya Financial Advisors (VFA) representatives have served their discipline with FINRA as part of this incident. It is important to note that FINRA did not find VFA to be irresponsible in its supervision of our reps and did not impose discipline against the firm,” Voya told ThinkAdvisor by email Tuesday.

“At the same time, Voya takes this matter seriously and the reps remain on heightened supervision. We remain committed to maintaining the trust and confidence that our clients place in us and our reps. We continue to work with our financial professionals to ensure they remain aware of their regulatory obligations to ensure such events do not reoccur in the future.”

For its part, Primerica, the parent company of PFS Investments, shared the following statement: “Continuing education ensures our representatives remain up-to-date on current laws and regulations and we do not tolerate representatives who do not comply. The representatives mentioned as part of this action were suspended by Primerica during the investigation and prior to the penalties issued by FINRA.”

Northwestern Mutual and Osaic declined to comment, while the other BDs didn’t immediately respond to requests for a statement.

– Janet Levaux and John Manganaro contributed to this report.