Wells Fargo Clearing Services, LLC Broker Peter Waldron Has Customer Complaint

According to records kept by The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) financial Broker Peter Waldron (Waldron), currently associated with Wells Fargo Clearing Services, LLC, has at least one disclosable event. These events include one customer complaint, alleging that Waldron recommended unsuitable investments in different investment products including debt securities among other allegations and complaints.

FINRA BrokerCheck shows a pending customer complaint on November 14, 2024.

Plaintiff alleges that beginning in April 2022, the financial advisor made unsuitable investment recommendations.

Under the securities laws brokers are obligated to act in their clients’ best interests and provide only suitable recommendations for investments to the client. Moreover, the SEC has introduced “Regulation Best Interest (Reg BI),” which, according to the SEC, elevates the brokerdealer standard of conduct beyond current suitability obligations and mandates that brokerdealers act in the best interest of retail customers when recommending any securities transaction or investment strategy related to securities. Regulation Best Interest and the fiduciary standard for investment advisers are drawn from key fiduciary principles that include an obligation to act in the retail investor’s best interest and not to place their own interests ahead of the investor’s interest.

Brokers have a duty to gather and review sufficient information about a retail investor to ensure their account recommendations are reasonably in the investor’s best interest. Recommendations cannot be based on materially inaccurate or incomplete information. Every recommendation’s cost and investor details are always part of material information. Types of costs that must be considered including account fees, commissions and transaction costs, tax considerations, as well as indirect costs.

In addition to obligation to understand the customer the broker must also investigate the product being sold. FINRA firms have an obligation to conduct a reasonable investigation of the issuer and the securities they recommend in offerings. A brokerage firm has a special relationship with a customer from the fact that in recommending the security, the broker represents to the customer that a reasonable investigation has been made. So, a brokerage firm should not depend solely on information from the issuer regarding a company, but must perform its own thorough investigation.

Additional investor safeguards include broker disclosure requirements. Brokers are required to reveal important events, such as customer complaints, IRS tax liens, judgments, investigations, terminations, and even criminal matters, publicly on their BrokerCheck reports. FINRA has recognized that recent studies offer evidence showing that brokers with a past record of regulatory and customer complaint issues are more likely to have such issues in the future. The Office of the Chief Economist (OCE) at FINRA released a study demonstrating that past disciplinary and disclosure events can indicate the likelihood of future similar events. The OCE study showed that past disclosure events, including regulatory actions, customer arbitrations and litigations of brokers, have significant power to predict future investor harm. The data shows that where a member firm on-boards brokers with a significant history of misconduct there is a high likelihood that the broker will continue to engage in similar behavior.

Waldron entered the securities industry in 2000. Waldron has been registered as a Broker with Wells Fargo Clearing Services, LLC since 2022.

Investors who have suffered losses are encouraged to contact us at (800) 810-4262 for consultation. At Gana Weinstein LLP, our attorneys are experienced representing investors who have suffered securities losses due to the mishandling of their accounts. Claims may be brought in securities arbitration before FINRA. Our consultations are free of charge and the firm is only compensated if you recover.

 

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