News & Products, March 2007

March 01, 2007 at 02:00 AM
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National Financial announced February 1 that it is expanding its alliance program by adding Fetter Logic Inc. to offer a suite of data management tools through its StreetScape platform allowing "away" asset reporting, aggregation, and consolidation through the Web for National Financial's 340 broker/dealers. Norman Malo, president and CEO of the Fidelity Investments clearing firm, said the Fetter deal grew out of National Financial's advisory board…

NASD has warned older Americans about the potential downside of selling their existing life insurance polices for cash in transactions known as life settlements or senior settlements. The transaction involves selling a life insurance policy that's no longer wanted or needed to a third party, usually for more than the policy's cash surrender value and less than its net death benefit. NASD encouraged investors to consider the following factors when deciding whether to sell their life insurance policies: privacy concerns; transaction costs; the financial impact; determining a fair price; and ongoing life insurance needs…

The SEC has authorized improvements to the NASD Code of Arbitration Procedure, including simplifying its language and reorganizing it in a more user-friendly way. The code is now separated into three parts–the Customer Code, the Industry Code, and the Mediation Code–and is organized to follow the sequential order of a typical arbitration. The Mediation Code was approved and became effective on January 30, 2006. The Customer and Industry Codes will become effective in April…

Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation announced a reduction in the fee for using its Networking service, which allows fund companies, broker/dealers, and other distributors to balance their books and records with the same information on customer activity available at the shareholder level. Effective January 2, the fee was reduced 40%, decreasing the cost of using the service to 15 cents for every 100 records from 25 cents/100 records. Networking currently supports more than 82 million customer and omnibus accounts…

NASD has fined Banc of America Investment Services $3 million for failure to obtain customer information for certain high-risk accounts and for failing to have adequate communication with its parent bank to ensure that BAI's independent suspicious activity report filing obligations were met.The 34 accounts at issue involved trust and private investment corporations. BAI allowed the accounts to engage in large wire transactions, even though BAI did not have beneficial ownership information for them. In addition, NASD also found that BAI had an inadequate compliance program for reporting suspicious transactions…

NASD fined four Fidelity broker/dealers a total of $3.75 million for improperly maintaining NASD registrations for 1,100 individuals, failing to assign registered supervisors to 1,000 individuals, failing to retain the e-mail of 1,900 registered individuals, and other electronic recordkeeping failures. NASD also ordered the four broker/dealers to conduct comprehensive audits of the firms' systems, policies, and procedures relating to registration and electronic recordkeeping. The Fidelity B/Ds settled the action without admitting or denying the charges…

UBS has appointed Craig Walling as CEO of the Private Bank at UBS Wealth Management, with responsibility for "expanding and enhancing" UBS's private banking offering in the U.S. Most recently, Walling served as president and CEO of U.S. Trust.

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