LPL Financial LLC is among five firms fined by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) for failing to deliver mutual fund prospectuses.
As reported Jan. 2 by Investment News, LPL Financial LLC agreed to pay a $400,000 fine as part of the agreement; State Farm VP Management Corp., $155,000; Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., $125,000; Scottrade Inc., $50,000; and T. Rowe Price Investment Services Inc., $40,000.
In the settlement, FINRA stated that LPL relied on its brokers to deliver prospectuses, but had no procedures in place to determine if the documents were delivered late. Over FINRA’s review period of January 2009 through June 2011, LPL was required to deliver 3.4 million prospectuses.
According to the settlement, State Farm was responsible for delivering 154,129 prospectuses during that period, at first through its brokers and later through a service provider. In each case, however, the firm had inadequate supervision, FINRA said.
Scottrade failed to deliver prospectuses in about 14,000 transactions out of 300,000. Deutsche Bank Securities missed delivery in 3,800 cases out of nearly 71,000 trades, and T. Rowe Price had 2,500 failures in more than 68,000 transactions.
Last month, LPL Financial faced sales abuse charges tied to non-traded real estate investment trusts when Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin filed civil charges against the firm for failing to supervise LPL brokers who sold investments in seven non-traded REITs.