Aug. 16, 2022
August 16, 2022 As an advisor, the deck is already stacked against us and FINRA already behaves biased against advisors. Many consumers file complaints against advisors for a variety of reasons including: 1. Consumer's lack of personal responsibility in decision making, asking questions, ensuring they understand what they are buying, etc. 2. Consumers want to simply change their mind and get out of a contract outside of contractual terms. Again, this falls in the category of lack of personal responsibility on their part. 3. Consumers don't understand what an advisor's job is and isn't. While I recognize that we as advisors bear the burden of responsibility to know our customer and educate them so they can make the best decisions, we can only do so much which is why we document our interactions with customers. If a customer complaint is truly meritless, then the advisor should not continue to be potentially harmed by having there meritless disclosures continue to be on their record. In recent years FINRA has pushed for optimal disclosure, requiring us to include on our websites the ability of consumers to do a Broker Check for disclosures. Isn't the point of this exercise for consumers to \"know their advisor\"? And shouldn't the purpose of Broker Check be to provide the consumers with accurate information? If FINRA makes it even more difficult than it already is to have meritless complaints expunged, then not only will Broker Check be inaccurate but it further enables consumers and FINRA to have the upper hand and further stack the deck against us. We are nearly po werless already to fight bad faith consumers. There is no evidence to support that the current expungement process is faulty or being unfairly decided. Requiring a three arbitrator panel and a unanimous decision similar to a judicial criminal case, with arbitrators appointed from a select group of arbitrators rather than a wider group is akin to our legal system doing away with a 12 member jury and and criminals being guilty until proven innocent. These proposed FINRA regulations are not in alignment with this country's basic legal system of innocent until proven guilty.