Meyer Wilson Principal and PIABA President David P. Meyer has co-authored a new PIABA report on FINRA’s high rates of unpaid arbitration awards and the need for mandated safeguards.
The report – FINRA Arbitration’s Persistent Unpaid Award Problem – is the third PIBA release since 2016 to address unpaid FINRA awards, which hover around more than 24% of all dollars awarded and which rose to nearly 30% in 2020. That’s roughly one of out every four dollars that goes unpaid.
In the report, Mr. Meyer and co-author Hugh Berkson discuss previous PIABA papers on the subject and how the securities industry has continually failed to implement protections that protect investors who prove claims against unscrupulous brokers and advisors. As Meyer and Berkson note, those failures would disproportionately impact investors in or near retirement in the event of a market correction.
The report also calls on state and federal legislators to take decisive action to strengthen protections and mandate a national investor recovery pool.
“Many investors do not discover the misconduct in their investment accounts until there is a market correction. For these investors, most of whom rely on their own savings – often in a retirement plan - rather than a pension to fund their retirements, a meaningful market downturn will likely reveal unprecedented harm to America’s retirees and those on the verge of retirement.
Since the industry has shown no interest in taking steps to ensure it maintains the same sort of financial responsibility it preaches to its customers, it is time for regulators and legislators to mandate seat belts, in the form of a national investor recovery pool.”
Read the full report: FINRA Arbitration’s Persistent Unpaid Award Problem.
David P. Meyer is the Founding Principal of Meyer Wilson and President of the Public Investors Advocate Bar Association. Regarded among the top in his field, Mr. Meyer has represented over 1,000 individual investors across the country in securities arbitration and litigation, and is actively involved in supporting the advancement of investors’ rights. His book about his experiences helping wronged investors recover losses and what investors can do to protect themselves, The Investor Protector, was released earlier this year.
