Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC, a subsidiary of Credit Suisse Group, has agreed to pay a USD345,000 fine as part of an agreement with the US Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). FINRA claims that the brokerage company failed to establish and maintain a functional supervisory system to oversee its employees’ outside brokerage accounts, from at least July 2016 to April 2019. Although employees were required to get permission prior executing trades on their personal brokerage accounts, Credit Suisse failed to ensure that their personnel met the requirements, the regulator said. The main reason was the lack of a supervisory system such as an automated system to track whether new hires made the required disclosure.
FINRA claims that the firm’s Global Personal Account Trading (GPAT) system was often unable to match trade data received from the brokerage firm feeds to a specific employee. As of September 2017, Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC had a backlog of about 8,000 accounts with approximately 52,000 trades that could not be matched to a specific employee.