CCO Series - Client Suitability

As a fiduciary, an RIA firm is required to make investment decisions in the best interests of its clients. When making decisions regarding the investment options for accounts an RIA firm needs to be able to defend such decisions as being reasonably suitable to the goals and needs of its beneficial owners. Regulators will seek to ensure that decisions made by the firm during the course of providing its services primarily benefit the client and are suitable for a particular account's objectives. Documentation that define a fund's investment objectives or a model portfolio strategy will be compared against the trading history and the decisions made for clients to validate whether or not the firm is making suitable investment decisions when providing its services.

RIA Client Suitability In a Nutshell

Client suitability starts with information about how the RIA firm's investment managers will provide its advisory services and the information about the client or fund that will be relied upon to guide those decisions. For a typical retail RIA situation, this may include your client profile, risk tolerance questionnaire, investment policy statement (IPS), or client notes capturing similar information. For structured investment products this may include the operating agreements, offering documents, and similar information about the funds, parties and entities involved. As these documents are executed, modified, updated or amended the advisor should keep and maintain this additional documentation for their firm's books and records.

Risks related to strategies used by an RIA firm must be disclosed to clients through Form ADV. Specifically in Form ADV Part 2A, the Disclosure Brochure, Item 8 Methods of Analysis, Investment Strategies and Risk of Loss should contain information regarding how the firm's investment management services will be applied to the client's accounts and the potential losses that can occur due to the way the firm will invest the client's assets. It is important for firms to review these disclosures and ensure they accurately reflect the firm's investment methods and cover the risks related to the firm's advisory services.

Confirming Suitability

After collecting a client's information, having them sign an advisory agreement and providing a copy of your ADV and other new client paperwork, suitability becomes a compliance matter for the relationship as you move to digest the information and start making investment decisions for the client's account(s). While your documentation may tell the client to notify your firm of any changes to their profile, goals or objectives, every RIA firm still has an obligation to reach out to the client and confirm the information you have is still accurate and that ultimately to confirm your current understanding of what is suitable for that client.

Confirming suitability can take the shape of having the client complete a new risk questionnaire, sign a new IPS, or to have a meeting with the client where you discuss the management of their account and address suitability matters. Documenting this confirmation is critical to the firm's books and records for compliance purposes on this topic, and can take the form of client notes indicating suitability was discussed and the results of that discussion, or the updated formal documents such as the questionnaire or IPS. For fund managers, this activity means ensuring that the decisions being made for the fund are reasonably accomplishing the objectives of the fund as described in its documentation and ensuring that due diligence documentation is retained for various non-public investments. By having this documentation in your firm's books and records you can demonstrate that your firm has upheld their fiduciary duty when making investment decisions for its various clients.

Through the Regulator's Eyes

Regulators expect RIA firms to maintain documentation on each advisory client to support the investment decisions made for their account(s). During an examination, regulators will typically ask firms to provide their risk questionnaires or similar documents used to obtain information about their clients, and will also request information about trades in client accounts, and will reconcile the two to ensure that decisions made for clients are suitable and that there is a rational basis between the documentation, analysis, and investments. Further, regulators will review the information in your firm's disclosure brochure to reconcile to the types of investments to ensure that the strategies and risks are properly and fully disclosed to clients.

CCO Best Practices

Conduct a random sampling review of client files to verify that suitability is appropriately documented. Run a comparison between the client's trading history and the suitability documented to ensure investment decisions are in line with investment objectives. Validate that the last outreach attempt to each client is within one year. Additionally, review your firm’s client intake/onboarding and ongoing review process to ensure you are capturing adequate information to make, or continue to make, appropriate investment decisions in client accounts and provide advice that is in the client’s best interest.

The AdvisorAssist CCO Series is a collection of blog posts that cover each of the elements of your RIA's compliance program. Each post will provide an overview of one compliance topic, including our insights on how regulators view each topic as well as some practical steps to help Chief Compliance Officers address this topic. As always, we would welcome your comments and thoughts.

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Protecting Vulnerable Adults from Financial Exploitation

The organization that represents the state securities agencies, North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA), recently announced that its membership had voted to adopt a model act designed to protect vulnerable adults from financial exploitation.¹ The model act, titled “An Act to Protect Vulnerable Adults from Financial Exploitation”, is now available for states to enact as legislation or implement through regulation. In addition, two new rules have been proposed by FINRA, which are also designed to also help combat financial exploitation of vulnerable adults.² Finally, to bring more attention to this issue, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued a report directed at financial institutions aimed at combating elder financial exploitation.

Protecting Vulnerable Adults in a Nutshell

Vulnerable adults are defined as persons over 65 years of age and those that qualify for protection under a state adult protective services statute. The protections for these individuals impact broker-dealers, investment advisor representatives, and those who serve in a supervisory, compliance, or legal capacity for broker-dealers and investment advisors. Generally, it will mean that as you are dealing with seniors and adults with disabilities, you may have additional responsibilities and a small amount of flexibility from regulators in dealing with certain situations.

Financial Exploitation

The type of financial exploitation that potentially could be stopped is the unauthorized use of the vulnerable adult’s assets, including when a power of attorney, guardianship, or conservatorship is used to make decisions harmful to the client. Both NASAA and the federal agencies have compiled evidence showing that trusted caregivers may obtain control over the vulnerable adult’s assets, then deprive them of the assets or convert the assets by exploiting the services of financial institutions including broker-dealers and investment advisors.³

Possible Changes

State securities regulators, FINRA and the CFPB may begin to incorporate regulatory changes to address this public concern. Advisors that have a reasonable belief that financial exploitation has been attempted or has occurred among their clients may be required to report it to the appropriate regulator and adult protective services agencies. Updates to state and federal rules may also allow advisors to notify any third parties designated by clients of their suspicions of financial exploitation, excepting any third party that are suspected to be the part of the financial exploitation. Finally, state rules may allow advisors to initially delay disbursements from an account of a vulnerable adult for up to 15 business days if, after review, there is suspicion that the disbursement may result in financial exploitation. The advisors may also extend the delay of disbursement for an additional 10 business days at the request of either the state securities regulator or adult protective services.

Crucially, NASAA’s model act grants immunity from administrative or civil liability for advisors when reporting to state regulators and agencies, notifying appropriate third parties, and delaying disbursements based on reasonable suspicions of financial exploitation while acting in good faith. However, the advisor will be required to provide records, including historical records, relevant to the suspected financial exploitation to the state’s adult protective services or law enforcement. As with all things compliance your books and records are very important.

CCO Best Practices

To prepare for dealing with vulnerable adults at your firm AdvisorAssist recommends the best practices of:

• Train staff to prevent, detect, and respond to elder financial abuse by escalating any suspicious activity to the CCO.
• Harness technology such as suspicious activity monitoring technology to identify potential financial abuse.
• Collaborate with stakeholders like custodians, banks, and plan sponsors to identify potentially at-risk clients and trusted third parties acting for the client’s protection
• Document, validate and report suspicious activity to your state regulators or federal agencies.
• Offer clients the ability to have your firm notify a trusted third party when financial exploitation is suspected.
• Maintain awareness of any existing rules or changes at your state securities regulator regarding their adoption of rules regarding vulnerable adults.

^{1. See NASAA Members Adopt Model Act at: Link. ↩}

^{2. See FINRA Regulatory Notice 15-37, October 2015 at: Link. ↩}

^{3. See Testimony of Judith Shaw, NASAA President before the US Senate Special Committee on Aging at: Link. ↩}

AdvisorAssist News for RIAs is a series of articles that will help your firm understand and prepare for changes that may be occurring on the state or federal level. Our goal is to help you increase your confidence that your firm remains in compliance as well as provide some practical steps to help Chief Compliance Officers address this topic.

Contributors:

Brendan Furey
Michael Conlon

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CCO Series: Top Regulatory Deficiencies for RIAs -- Books and Records

What you need to know

Registered investment advisors are required to maintain and preserve books and records in an easily accessible place for a period of not less than five years from the end of the fiscal year during which the last entry was made on such record, the first two years in an appropriate office of the investment advisor.¹ We cover books and records compliance in more detail in a previous post.
Annually, the North American Securities Administrators Association (“NASAA”) issues a report about common deficiencies found in state coordinated investment adviser examinations.² The most common books and records deficiencies described by NASAA are lack of documentation of “recommendations made or proposed and any advice given or proposed,”³ which will include 1) the advisor’s analysis of client suitability for an investment product and 2) when acting as a fiduciary why the advice is the client’s “best interest”.

Common Deficiency: Client Suitability Records

Examiners noted the lack of documentation about the suitability of an investment product and lack of documentation that the advice is the client’s “best interest”. The mantra of an examiner is that if it is not documented then it was not done. Since July of 2012 when the FINRA suitability obligations went into effect,⁴ a major focus of the examiner’s books and records review has been on whether suitability is being properly documented in the client profile.

Common Deficiency: Focus on Fiduciaries

In addition, with the new Department of Labor fiduciary rule being published on April 8th, and effective in April 2017, examiners will be focused on reviewing suitability and “best interest” documentation. With the new fiduciary rule advisors serving clients in qualified retirement plans and IRAs will need to document how the advice is in the client’s “best interest” similar to other ERISA clients. Also, in certain cases the advisor’s client agreement may need to satisfy a Best Interest Contract Exemption pursuant to the new rule.

How do we avoid these deficiencies?

To avoid these deficiencies at your firm AdvisorAssist recommends the best practices of:

• Perform an annual review of the advisor’s books and records archive to ensure you are keeping the required documentation for the required duration.
• Preparing and maintaining a comprehensive profile on each client. This profile should be created during the onboarding of the client, confirmed with the client annually and updated as any new accounts or new information is received from the client.
• Ensure your books and records contains all necessary backup documentation in addition to the client profile as needed to support your investment recommendations or advice.
• Create and maintain Best Interest Contracts as needed for DOL-regulated transactions involving retirement plans.
• Document in the client profile why advice regarding rollovers and other major transactions are in client’s best interest. Stay up to date with Fiduciary Rule Changes by clicking this link.

<sup>1. See 17 CFR §275.204-2(e)(1). Link. ↩
2. See North American Securities Administrators Association, “2015 Investment Adviser Coordinated Exams,”. Link. ↩
3. See 17 CFR §275.204-2(a)(7). Link. ↩
4. See FINRA Regulatory Notice 11-02. Link. ↩</sup>

AdvisorAssist’s CCO Series: Regulatory Deficiencies for RIAs is a series of articles that will help your firm understand and avoid the most common compliance deficiencies found by regulators. Our goal is to help you increase your confidence that your firm remains “exam ready” as well as some practical steps to help Chief Compliance Officers address this topic.
Contributors:
Brendan Furey
Michael Conlon

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