Raymond James & Associates

Raymond James & Associates was fined $300,000 for issuing customers trade confirmations that inaccurately disclosed the firm’s execution capacity or whether the trade was executed at an average price, or inaccurately disclosed or omitted its status as a market maker in the security.

The findings stated that when the firm acted in more than one capacity in executing orders, it did not provide each specific capacity that it acted in on the customer confirmations. Instead, the firm disclosed that it acted in a mixed capacity and that the breakdown of execution capacity is available upon request.

The firm’s system prevented it from populating the specific capacities that the firm acted in if it acted in more than one capacity on a transaction.

Further, due to a programing error, the firm sent customers trade confirmations that incorrectly disclosed transactions as average price executions when the firm filled the order in a single execution.

A review of two of the firm’s order management systems revealed that it incorrectly identified single executions as average price executions on confirmations issued to customers. Moreover, the firm failed to disclose or inaccurately disclosed that it was a market maker on confirmations sent to customers.

This issue stemmed from a programing error that impacted the input that identified the accurate market maker status on trade confirmations. The firm has since updated its systems to specify each capacity that it acted in and properly identify whether transactions were average price executions, as well as corrected the programming error.