April 3, 2009
I am an attorney located in San Antonio, Texas. I am in private practice and regularly represent customers. I support this proposed rule change, especially in regard to the provision requiring the registered person to report sales practice violations when the customer files an arbitration and does not name the registered person but identifies the registered person in the body of the arbitration as the person responsible.
In my practice, I rarely name the registered person as a respondent however, the registered person's name may appear in the statement of claim more often than the respondent, simply because the registered person is the agent of the firm and is the one specifically responsible for the alleged sales practice violation(s).
It seems to me to be misleading to the public when a customer investigates their registered person on BrokerCheck and finds no sales practice violations simply because that broker was not "named" as a party to a lawsuit or arbitration, when in fact, the broker may have been the alleged wrongdoer in the lawsuit or arbitration, but not named as a party.
More transparency is needed for the public to be able to adequately investigate their registered representative. This rule change would be a good step towards that goal.