FINRA Fines Firm for Inaccurate Muni Trade Reporting

A firm settled FINRA charges for inaccurately reporting over 16,000 municipal securities transactions in violation of MSRB trade reporting rules.

According to the AWC, the firm failed to report "the correct time of trade" to the MSRB's Real-Time Transaction Reporting System ("RTRS") for "approximately 12,100 municipal securities transactions." FINRA found that, due to a system default, the firm reported the time of order confirmation instead of the time of execution. FINRA stated that this discrepancy also caused "approximately 160 trades" to be reported late.

FINRA determined that the firm also failed to report approximately 4,700 additional municipal securities "step-out" trades to the RTRS. FINRA found that the trades "were initially executed in a customer account but [were] subsequently canceled and re-booked to a master account." FINRA highlighted that when the trades were canceled for re-booking, they were not re-reported to the RTRS after the original submissions were voided.

FINRA concluded that the firm violated MSRB Rule G-14 ("Reports of Sales or Purchases") and G-27 ("Supervision").

To settle the charges, the firm agreed to (i) a censure and (ii) pay a $55,000 fine.