News & Events –

Bates Group director and expert Greg Kyle was recently interviewed by CBS News for their MoneyWatch feature.

The past few months have been a particularly busy time for state financial regulators and enforcement officials. At almost every turn, the complicated and overlapping relationship between federal and state officials is being tested. A review of recent activities by the North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA) provides several examples. In this article, Bates recaps recent NASAA developments on cryptocurrency, fraud enforcement, Regulation Best Interest (Reg BI), and supervision of complex financial products (i.e. non-traditional Exchange Traded Funds).

Bates Group’s Compliance Director Jill Ehret will be speaking at the 2nd Annual FI Summit on Wednesday, August 14th at the LA Galaxy Stadium. Bates is a proud co-sponsor of this year's event.

Bates Group’s new Managed Document Review services enable organizations to leverage the advantages of highly experienced review specialists and technology-enabled e-discovery review solutions allowing you to focus your time and effort on the high-value tasks your legal team was hired to perform.

Last week, the New York Supreme Court upheld the “Suitability and Best Interest in Life Insurance and Annuity Transactions” regulation (a/k/a Regulation 187) in the face of legal challenges brought by several associations and insurance agent groups. In this article we take a look at what the decision means, recent developments in both the SEC and NAIC efforts to rewrite standards, and we update you on the latest in the legal battle over commission trails for brokers selling variable annuities.

The growing global cannabis market is estimated to reach $66.3 billion by 2025, up from $13.8 billion in 2018. That kind of growth is spurring congressional and state legislators to seek to normalize the market for marijuana-related businesses and speed up the resolution of federal-state legal conflicts. In this article Bates looks at some of the recent federal legislative and state developments on what appears to be real momentum toward a fully functioning and legitimate market.

The SEC Office of Compliance, Inspections and Examinations (OCIE) issued a Risk Alert to address compliance and disclosure issues raised in examinations covering the oversight practices of SEC-registered investment advisers “that previously employed, or currently employ, any individual with a history of disciplinary events.” OCIE also proposed a number of ways that firms could address the weaknesses in their compliance frameworks related to supervised individuals with a prior history of disciplinary events.

After analyzing data collected in Suspicious Activity Reports, FinCEN issued an update to a 2016 Advisory alerting financial institutions on how best to combat criminal schemes that compromise business email accounts. The problem of criminals targeting business fund transfers is not small. So-called “Business Email Compromise” scammers possibly stole billions of dollars from companies and individuals in 2018, more than in prior years, according to a new FinCEN Financial Trend Analysis of the SARs data. In this article, Bates considers the informed guidance in FinCEN’s new 2019 Advisory to financial institutions, as well as some of the salient conclusions drawn from the trend analysis report.

Josephine Vu is Bates Group's new Director of People and Culture.

A. Christine Davis, Bates Group's Director of Forensic Accounting and Financial Crimes, is on the faculty of Practising Law Institute's CLE program "Basics of Accounting for Lawyers 2019," taking place July 23-24, 2019 in San Francisco. The two-day program reviews how some common accounting concepts may emerge in legal work, and what lawyers should consider when encountering them. 

Bates Group is alerting counsel that we are seeing an uptick in option-related cases where firms offered their clients strategies to increase the yield in their investment portfolio, often involving options trading in order to earn premium income to enhance a portfolio’s regular returns. Bates staff and experts have provided both consulting and testimony services in matters involving options trading within a client account.

On June 25th, the U.S. House of Representatives weighed in and voted for an amendment to a bill with the intent of prohibiting the SEC from “implementing, administering, enforcing, or publicizing” the final rules and interpretations of Reg BI. The amendment is not likely to pass the Senate, and as this week’s formal publication of Reg BI in the Federal Register makes clear, the dates for implementation and compliance are set, even as the debate over the new rule package continues. In this article, we review SEC Chair Clayton’s endorsement of the regulation, and his point-by-point rebuttal of the criticism that it has received since agency adoption.

The formal publication by the Federal Register on July 12, 2019, of Regulation Best Interest triggers final effective and compliance dates for the rulemaking package. 

Bates Group is a proud sponsor of the SIFMA Regulation Best Interest Seminar on Wednesday, July 10 in Washington, D.C. Speakers will address the final Reg BI rule, form CRS, and the broader regulatory landscape. Look for financial services industry leader and Bates Senior Compliance Consultant Jerry Baker at the seminar!

This month, a bipartisan group of Senate Banking Committee members introduced legislation to address current gaps inhibiting the fight against illicit financing of criminal activity (CFT). This follows the House Financial Services Committee's adoption of an aggressive legislative agenda aimed at modernizing and closing loopholes in the AML/CFT framework. Of key interest to both the Senate and the House is the expansion of the use of “beneficial ownership information” of the type now collected under the Customer Due Diligence rules that went into effect last year. In this article, Bates reviews the developing congressional legislative efforts to detect and deter financial crime.

The SEC's recent adoption of Reg BI has not stopped the states from pursuing their own higher standards. Last week, Massachusetts became the latest state to propose a uniform fiduciary standard for broker-dealers and advisers when dealing with its residents. A group of trade associations have also expressed concerns regarding New Jersey's proposal to apply uniform fiduciary standards to broker-dealers and investment advisers for recommendations and advice they may give to New Jersey investors. Bates Research takes a closer look at the Massachusetts proposal and the broader federal/state power struggle.