Sandra D. Grannum, James G. Lundy and Heaven L. Chandler discuss Robinhood’s alleged violation of Massachusetts’ new fiduciary duty rule for broker-dealers on the Broker-Dealer Regulations and Insights blog. Massachusetts’ Secretary of Commonwealth, William Galvin, filed a regulatory complaint raising three different violations against Robinhood. The complaint attempts to ban the trading app for violating the State’s fiduciary duty rule which requires broker-dealers to act in the best interest of their clients. This new rule, passed in February 2020, was created in response to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Regulation Best Interest (Reg BI). During this past year, due to COVID-19 and other meme-based investment activities on the application, Robinhood accumulated over 3 million new users in the first four months of 2020. Galvin’s concerns revolve around the 500,000 customers in Massachusetts, with accounts totaling over $1.6 billion. For more information, please read the post on the Broker-Dealer blog.
We previously posted another discussion on the New York best interest fiduciary rule for insurance that was recently struck down. This has now also been posted to the Broker-Deal Blog.