NEXT FINANCIAL GROUP Fined Again by FINRA

On December 6, 2017, Houston-based, NEXT FINANCIAL GROUP, INC. CRD#: 46214, SEC#: 51356 agreed to pay a $750,000 fine to FINRA and were required to retain an independent consultant to conduct a comprehensive review of the adequacy of the firm’s policies, systems and procedures (written and otherwise) and training, as part of settlement for a variety of alleged violations, which included the failure to discover a broker's excessive trading and poor supervision of variable annuity (VA) sales.
FINRA has fined NEXT FINANCIAL GROUP from 2009 to 2014, $1.54 million and ordered it to pay $2.1 million in restitution to their clients for a variety of alleged issues, including the sale of fraudulent private placements, and excessive trading which increased their brokers’ sales commissions.
NEXT FINANCIAL GROUP has approximately 600 registered representatives and it generated $107.8 million in revenues in 2016.
The current fines issued by FINRA for NEXT FINANCIAL GROUP are due to a variety of alleged violations from August 2012 to September 2015. The major violation occurred when NEXT FINANCIAL GROUP allegedly failed to detect excessive trading in one of their senior investor's accounts which resulted in losses of $392,000 and the broker generated commissions of $148,000, according to FINRA. NEXT FINANCIAL GROUP fired the registered representative and paid the client a $387,000 settlement.
NEXT FINANCIAL GROUP’s due diligence over variable annuity (VA) transactions fell short, according to FINRA. According to FINRA, NEXT FINANCIAL GROUP failed to establish, maintain and enforce systematic procedures to identify possible inappropriate rates of VA exchanges.  FINRA stated that instead, NEXT FINANCIAL GROUP relied on its principals reviewing VA transactions to manually identify significant trends in terms of high volume VA exchange transactions, without providing any guidance or tools such as exception reports or trend analysis to assist the reviewers in evaluating whether exchange rates were excessive.
NEXT FINANCIAL GROUP’s main office is located at:
2500 WILCREST DRIVE
SUITE 620
HOUSTON, TX 77042 UNITED STATES
If you’ve suffered losses due to the actions or recommendations by any of NEXT FINANCIAL GROUP’s registered representatives, such as excessive trading or in the sale of variable annuities, call Soreide Law Group for a no cost consultation by an experienced securities lawyer regarding the possible recovery of your losses through a FINRA arbitration at:  888-760-6552.
Soreide Law Group represents clients nationwide before FINRA.  We operate on a contingency fee basis.
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