The Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization (CIRO) is continuing in its campaign of sanctioning representatives for keeping pre-signed forms and for making alterations to client forms without obtaining client initials to acknowledge the alterations.
In one case, CIRO has fined John Dixon Moody, an Investia Financial Services Inc. registered representative in the Calgary, Alberta-area $18,500 and has reserved its decision on costs. In a second case, Sun Life Financial Investment Services Inc. registered representative Stephanie Vaarsi received a $22,500 fine and must pay costs in the amount of $2,500. Although Moody made more alterations and additionally kept four pre-signed account forms, Vaarsi was more heavily penalized because she had previously been warned about her assistant’s decision to collect pre-signed forms without Vaarsi’s knowledge.
“The dealer member’s warning letter indicated that the account forms described had been obtained at the direction of the respondent’s former assistant without the respondent’s knowledge, but that the responding was responsible for the acts of her assistant,” Vaarsi’s settlement agreement states. “The respondent altered all of the account forms that are the subject of this settlement agreement in the period after the dealer member previously warned the respondent.” At the time, Vaarsi was placed under close supervision for six months and required to complete compliance coursework. In the current case, Vaarsi was also issued a warning letter, fined $10,000 by her firm and put on close supervision for six months.
In Moody’s case the representative, registered since June 2012, is being sanctioned for altering 29 account forms for 25 different clients, and for keeping the four pre-signed forms. The transgressions reportedly occurred between 2016 and 2020. In Vaarsi’s case the Toronto-area representative who was first registered in 1992, is being sanctioned for making 26 alterations for 22 clients, between 2016 and 2018.
