Former fund rep sanctioned for exceeding registration

A former mutual fund rep has been fined and permanently banned after a regulatory hearing panel found that he violated securities rules by exceeding his mutual fund registration.

Following a hearing, a panel of the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization (CIRO) ordered that Patrick Joseph Conlin, a former rep with Investors Group Financial Services Inc. in London, Ont., is permanently banned. He was also fined $75,000 and ordered to pay $10,000 in costs.

The sanctions follow the panel’s ruling that Conlin violated the self-regulatory organization’s rules by exceeding the limits of his registration by filling out know-your-client (KYC) information on new account documents for a client that was moving their accounts to his firm’s investment dealer affiliate, Investors Group Securities Inc.

According to the SRO’s allegations, while the firm allowed fund reps to fill out certain information on new account applications — such as biographical information (name, age and address) — fund reps were not permitted to also collect KYC information such as a client’s investment knowledge, risk tolerance, and investment objectives.

The firm advised its reps that completing KYC information on account forms for the investment dealer affiliate “was conduct that exceeded the scope of their mutual fund registration,” the SRO noted in its allegations.

Additionally, the panel found that Conlin violated SRO rules by failing to process transactions requested by a client, and that he failed to cooperate with its investigation.

According to the allegations, a client asked Conlin in June 2021 to transfer $55,000 from his corporate account to his RRSP account, and to buy a mutual fund for his RRSP. However, by early July, the transactions had not yet been made, and Conlin allegedly failed to respond to a query from the client about the lack of action.

In August, the client reportedly complained to the dealer, which offered him compensation for the losses he’d suffered as a result of uncompleted transactions. It also transferred his accounts to a new rep.

The firm reported the complaint to the SRO, but said Conlin never cooperated with its efforts to investigate that complaint.

In October 2021, he was terminated by the firm.