Finding banned advisors: our methodology

Our analysis is based on data from the 2013, 2014 and 2015 enforcement reports from the MFDA and IIROC, the Canadian Securities Administrators’ National Registration Database, the provincial insurance regulators’ licensing databases and the Canadian Insurance Regulators Disciplinary Actions database.

Each MFDA and IIROC enforcement report contains a list of registrants who had disciplinary actions against them conclude during that year. We ran those registrants’ names through the National Registration Database to determine registration and penalty details. When the NRD did not include the information, we referred to enforcement documents from the SRO. In all cases, we cross-checked NRD information against the enforcement documents from the appropriate SRO.

Unless otherwise noted, effective dates for any penalties were considered to be the date on the person’s NRD record, cross-checked against:

• for IIROC, the date of the hearing panel Decision release; and
• for MFDA, the date of the Reasons and Decisions release.

We then ran all names through each provincial insurance regulator’s database and the CIR database to determine the period they are or were licensed to sell. That allowed us to determine overlap between an SRO ban and being authorized to sell.

The provincial regulators we examined are:

• Insurance Council of B.C.
• Alberta Insurance Council
• Insurance Councils of Saskatchewan
• Insurance Council of Manitoba
• Financial Services Commission of Ontario
• Autorité des marchés financiers
• Nova Scotia Office of the Superintendent for Insurance
• P.E.I. Department of Justice and Public Safety
• New Brunswick Financial and Consumer Services Commission
• Financial Services Regulation Division, Newfoundland

Read responses from the regulators here.

Notes and caveats

• Being “authorized to sell” or “active” does not mean a licensee was in fact practicing in the industry; our analysis is based on licence status only.
• We excluded inconclusive cases (e.g., inexact matches; duplicate names) for the purposes of this analysis. We also accounted for people who had been disciplined twice.
• This analysis does not account for a registrant changing his or her name to register elsewhere, although, when aliases were noted in the NRD, we accounted for them.
• The territories are not included in this analysis.
• Our research was conducted between January 2016 and June 2016.
• Aside from confirmation calls and emails with regulators, licensing bodies and SROs, this analysis is based entirely on publicly available information.

• Analysis
• Recommendations
• Methodology

Produced with research and editorial assistance from Dean DiSpalatro and fact checking from Michelle Schriver and Allan Tong. Art direction by Lena Diaz. Web production by Megan Ip.

Melissa Shin

Melissa is the editorial director of Advisor.ca and leads Newcom Media Inc.’s group of financial publications. She has been with the team since 2011 and been recognized by PMAC and CFA Society Toronto for her reporting. Reach her at mshin@newcom.ca. You may also call or text 416-847-8038 to provide a confidential tip.