The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) announced today that it has fined J.P. Morgan Securities $2.8 million for violating the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) Customer Protection Rule and for related supervisory failures. The SEC rule creates requirements to protect customers’ funds and securities.
To ensure that customers could recover their assets in the event of the broker-dealer’s insolvency, the Customer Protection Rule requires a broker-dealer, which maintains custody of customer securities, to obtain and maintain physical possession or control over certain of those securities. These securities must be segregated in a “control location” and be free of liens or any other encumbrance that could prevent customers from taking possession of their securities. A firm cannot use segregated securities for its own purposes.
FINRA found that from March 2008 to June 2016, J.P. Morgan Clearing Corp. did not have reasonable processes in place to ensure that its possession or control systems were operating properly. Shares that should have been segregated were available for the firm’s use, due to systemic coding and design flaws, recurring and unresolved deficits and unreasonable supervision. By failing to move and maintain securities in good control locations, the firm created deficits in foreign and domestic securities valued at hundreds of millions of dollars. For example, J.P. Morgan failed to move Italian securities to a good control location for nearly two years, and on one sample day, created a deficit in 81 Italian securities worth approximately $146 million.
Firms have a fundamental responsibility to safeguard the securities of their customers,” said Susan Schroeder, Executive Vice President of FINRA’s Department of Enforcement. “The Customer Protection Rule is an important component of investor protection, and member firms must have reasonably designed and maintained systems and procedures to comply with the possession and control requirements.
In determining the appropriate monetary sanction, FINRA considered J.P. Morgan’s cooperation in undertaking a plan to address the violations and that it over-reserved cash deposits in an effort to protect customers from its failed segregation of securities. In settling this matter, J.P. Morgan neither admitted nor denied the charges, but consented to the entry of FINRA’s findings.