StoneX Financial Inc. (CRD #45993, Winter Park, Florida)

August 6, 2024 – An AWC was issued in which the firm was censured, fined $70,000, and ordered to pay $27,074.36, plus interest, in restitution to be paid to corresponding broker-dealers for payment to their customers. Without admitting or denying the findings, the firm consented to the sanctions and to the entry of findings that it failed to provide best execution with respect to orders in Overthe-Counter (OTC) securities that it received from other broker-dealers for those brokers’ customers by failing to use reasonable diligence to ascertain the best market for the subject securities and by failing to buy or sell in such market so that the resultant prices to the customers were as favorable as possible under prevailing market conditions. The findings stated that the firm’s supervisory system was not reasonably designed to achieve compliance with its best execution obligations. The firm’s supervisory system for best execution in OTC securities failed to account for price opportunities available through an electronic messaging service, which enabled the firm and other individual market-makers to send each other messages (OTC Link messages) indicating an interest to buy or sell a specific number of shares of a security at a particular price, when evaluating the execution quality of orders Disciplinary and Other FINRA Actions 5 October 2024 received from customers of other broker-dealers. Because the firm’s supervisory system excluded reviews of prices available in OTC Link messages, it had no way to determine whether such orders received an inferior execution to that available via OTC Link messages. The firm later integrated OTC Link messages into its order management system and implemented a new supervisory review to consider OTC Link messages when assessing execution quality in OTC securities’ transactions. (FINRA Case #2018057892701)