Ryan P. Friel,left, and Samuel E. Cohen,right, of Marshall Dennehey Warner Coleman & Goggin. Courtesy photos
A proposal from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) designed to make it more difficult for securities brokers to expunge customer disputes from their publicly available records received approval from the U.S. Securites and Exchange Commission (SEC) on April 12.
Over the last two decades, FINRA, the securities industry self-regulatory organization whose motto is “Investor Protection, Market Integrity,” has incrementally restricted the rules related to the expungement of customer complaints made against brokers. During that time the expungement process has become more cumbersome, costly and limited. Now, with the SEC’s approval of arguably the most sweeping changes ever to FINRA expungement rules, brokers will soon be faced with even greater difficulty when seeking to expunge their records of career-damaging customer complaints.
