LPL Financial sanctioned $11.7 million for widespread supervisory failures involving complex products
Company: LPL Financial Holdings Inc.
Summary
FINRA censured LPL Financial LLC in 2015 and imposed a $10 million fine plus approximately $1.7 million in restitution for broad supervisory failures. FINRA found deficiencies involving LPL's supervision of sales of non-traditional exchange-traded funds, variable annuity contracts, non-traded real estate investment trusts and other complex products. The regulator also identified failures involving trade monitoring and reporting. FINRA found that LPL failed to deliver more than 14 million trade confirmations to customers. The investigation also identified weaknesses in LPL's automated anti-money-laundering surveillance. According to FINRA, programming flaws prevented LPL's surveillance system from generating certain alerts concerning potentially suspicious ATM activity. LPL agreed to a $10 million fine and approximately $1.7 million in restitution to customers. Primary source: FINRA — July 2015 Disciplinary Actions: https://www.finra.org/sites/default/files/publication_file/July_2015_Disciplinary_Actions.pdf