NFA Orders Introducing Broker Marex to Pay a $250,000 Fine

　　The US National Futures Association (NFA) announced on Wednesday that it ordered the UK introducing broker Marex Spectron International Limited (Marex) to pay a $250,000 fine.

　　According to the press release, NFAs Business Conduct Committee (BCC) issued the decision based on a complaint filed by the BCC and a settlement offer submitted by Marex, in which the company neither admitted nor denied the allegations.

　　Marex allegedly allowed unregistered individuals to act as associated persons without registering as such. In addition, Marex was alleged to have not supervised its employees and agents diligently. Marex was found to have violated NFA Bylaw 301(b) and Compliance Rule 2-9(a) in its decision.

　　The company has not issued a statement addressing the NFAs decision as of press time.

　　FINRA Fines Deutsche Bank

　　In unrelated fines, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) recently said that it had imposed a $2 million fine on Deutsche Bank Securities for best execution violations. According to the press release, the banking institution failed to comply with its obligation to seek the best execution for its customers orders.

　　FINRA Rule 5310 requires firms to seek the most favorable terms reasonably available for customers‘ orders. For this purpose, firms must conduct reviews to evaluate the quality of order execution their customers receive under the firm’s current routing arrangements and the execution quality their customer orders could receive under alternative routing arrangements.

　　Admiral Markets Fined

　　Also, Admiral Markets AS, which operates the forex and CFDs broker brand Admirals, was slapped in February with a misdemeanor order and a monetary fine of €20,000 by the Estonian financial markets regulator for errors in mandatory regulatory reporting of transactions.

　　The broker said that it has already made efforts to comply with the reporting obligations of the Estonian Financial Supervision Authority.

　　Furthermore, the company pointed out that it started to correct the reporting errors immediately after their detection, but that effort could not help given the stipulated time limit for transaction reporting. In addition, it resulted in late reporting of transactions.