The Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization (CIRO) would appear to have a new type of transgression in its sights: An increasing number of branch managers are being sanctioned for altering client contact information in an effort to avoid receiving negative feedback.
Specifically, CIRO has accepted three additional settlement agreements, this after publishing several earlier this month, wherein registered representatives working for bank-affiliated member dealers are being sanctioned for altering client emails or setting client preferences to a do-not-contact option regarding surveys and promotional materials, impacting their respective firms’ ability to communicate with clients.
In the first instance, TD Investment Services Inc. registered representative, Poorvika Kandiah admitted that between September 2020 and April 2021, she set contact preferences to “no” for seven clients and 36 bank customers, without their consent. “The dealer member prohibited approved persons from changing client contact preferences contained in the client contact information systems without the consent of the client,” Kandiah’s settlement agreement states. “The respondent engaged in the misconduct in order to prevent client from receiving a survey which could have potentially negatively affected the customer feedback metric for the respondent’s branch, as well as her eligibility for rewards and recognition programs.”
In Kandiah’s case, the Toronto-area representative, registered since May 2018 and a branch manager since June 2020, agreed to a two-month suspension from acting in a supervisory capacity, along with a fine in the amount of $7,500 and costs totaling $5,000. TD also reprimanded the branch manager and suspended her without pay for three days.
In a second case published, CIRO also accepted a settlement agreement with Winnipeg, Manitoba-area TD representative, Charlene Waldmo, who received all of the same sanctions, but only a one-day suspension from the firm. Waldmo admitted that between February 2018 and June 2018 she altered characters in client email addresses for the same purposes, affecting eight clients and 17 bank customers. In addition to impacting survey dissemination, the changes also affected the bank’s ability to verify client identities when providing virtual service, prevented the delivery of account statements and trade confirmations, and may have resulted in misdirected correspondence. Registered since June 1992 and working as a branch manager since September 2009, Waldmo will also join Kandiah in completing remedial coursework.
Finally, a third decision handed down by CIRO hearing panels, involves Winnipeg, Manitoba-area registered representative with Royal Mutual Funds Inc., Maria Khristine Santos, who has been registered since December 2017 and has been working as a branch manager since November 2021. Santos is accused of altering characters in client emails to prevent the delivery of client feedback surveys in approximately 126 instances between November 2018 and June 2019.
Santos was suspended from acting as a branch manager or in any supervisory capacity for a year. She was also assessed a fine of $16,000 and costs in the amount of $5,000.
