Submitted by nsscadmin on
Following last week’s rundown on how to check registration, we received similar requests to show how to check the CSA’s Disciplined Person’s list.
To start you first need to go to the CSA website, which can be found at www.securities-administrators.ca. At the top of the page you’ll see six tabs. Hover over the “Enforcement” tab and click on “Disciplined List.” That will take you here:
The front page of the disciplined list outlines all the securities regulators decisions against individuals and companies that are included in the list and how far back each regulator’s list goes. If you scroll down past that you’ll find an alphabetic list of all decisions which you can browse, the search bar, and the 10 most recent individuals or companies disciplined.
We’re going to focus on the search bar. Here you can enter the name of any individual or firm to see if they have been disciplined by a securities regulator. You can also narrow it down by jurisdiction, the violation, the sanction and by date.
When you enter a name and click search you’ll be given the results for anyone with that name that has been disciplined. Say your search brings you back a name. When you click on the name you’ll be shown all the information around the disciplinary action taken against them. This includes the jurisdiction that disciplined them, any sanctions or bans laid against them, what their violations were, any payments they were ordered to pay, and if you want more information, the supporting documents from that jurisdiction.
Violations on the disciplined list can range from the very serious, such as illegal insider trading, market manipulation or fraud, or maybe not as serious such as disclosure violations. If you find your adviser or their company on the disciplined persons list it up to you to decide whether their past violations are egregious enough to end your business relationship with them.