The Public Investors Advocate Bar Association (PIABA) is a bar association of attorneys who represent investors involved in disputes related to the securities industry. The PIABA Foundation provides educational materials designed to prevent investment abuse and to raise awareness of the investment-related securities arbitration dispute resolution process.
Since 2013, PIABA and the PIABA Foundation have documented how some brokers and brokerage firms have taken advantage of the broker expungement process to erase legitimate investor complaints from any public records.
The expungement process is designed to allow registered brokers to remove baseless complaints against them from the public record, but the process has been abused in recent years so that legitimate complaints against brokers are often expunged along with the baseless complaints.
However, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) are responsible for ensuring that an expungement is approved only when a complaint against a broker is baseless, and the SEC is now considering a series of proposals that would substantially reform the current broker expungement process.
The SEC has requested public comments on these proposals (FINRA SR-2022-024), and the PIABA Foundation has responded with a letter to the SEC which expresses “grave concerns” about the current expungement system but also expresses unequivocal support for the proposed reforms that are currently under consideration.
One the proposals would give investors the right to participate “in all aspects” of an expungement hearing. Another proposal would prevent a broker who has been found liable by an arbitration panel or “a court of competent jurisdiction” from seeking to expunge that claim.
The PIABA Foundation believes that investors have a right to accurate background information about brokers and brokerage firms, and it further believes that no investor should have to suffer because accurate background information about a broker has been wrongly expunged.
Media Contact
Company Name: The PIABA Foundation
Contact Person: Lisa Bragança, President
Email: Send Email
Phone: (855) 410-2444
Address:1300 McGee Drive, Suite 112
City: Norman
State: Oklahoma 73072
Country: United States
Website: https://piabafoundation.org/
