The contingency fund that covers mutual fund dealers’ clients may be facing a significant hit from a recent dealer insolvency that is generating millions in potential claims against the fund.
As of late October, the MFDA Investor Protection Corp. (MFDA IPC) has received almost $8 million in claims as a result of Markham, Ont.-based W.H. Stuart Mutuals Ltd.’s insolvency. The Mutual Fund Dealers Association of Canada (MFDA) suspended the firm on May 31; on Sept. 18, W.H. Stuart was ordered into bankruptcy by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice. (Ernst & Young LLP was named the bankruptcy trustee.)
Now, the MFDA IPC indicates that it is facing $7.9 million in possible investor claims against the fund from W.H. Stuart clients who may have lost money as a result of the firm’s insolvency. Says the MFDA IPC’s latest annual report: “It appears that some client accounts may have shortfalls in the amount of cash or mutual funds owed to these clients.”
However, it’s not yet clear how much the MFDA IPC may ultimately have to pay out. For one, there still may be claims that have yet to come in, as clients typically have six months from the date of insolvency to file a claim. The MFDA IPC’s president, Joni Alexander, indicates that’s not a hard and fast rule, either; the MFDA IPC may take claims that come in later, depending on the circumstances. That said, she suggests, the claims total may not rise that much, as those with the biggest claims tend to get them in early.
Second, the MFDA IPC has yet to rule on the validity of the claims it has received. The MFDA IPC will have to wade through the claims and determine which ones are eligible for coverage, and in what amount. As a result, the MFDA IPC says, it’s not yet possible to reliably estimate the claims payable by the fund.
In addition, Alexander says, it’s much too early to say just what may have happened to investors’ money. Given that the bankruptcy trustee was appointed only in September, the process of trying to track down any missing money has just begun.
However, that process is distinct from the MFDA IPC’s function. The contingency fund’s job is to determine if investors are missing funds, and then to compensate eligible claimants. Alexander says the MFDA IPC doesn’t have to trace the fate of the monies themselves in order to validate a claim. The MFDA IPC simply has to determine that a client is missing money and that the assets are covered by the MFDA IPC in order to compensate that client.
The MFDA IPC has an interest in finding out what happened to the money, Alexander says, as the contingency fund will become a creditor of the insolvent firm. However, it’s the trustee that really has the power to carry out that investigation.
The MFDA is in the midst of its own investigation into what transpired at W.H. Stuart, says MFDA president and CEO Mark Gordon: “We are continuing to conduct a full investigation, with a view to determining the scope of the activity and identifying further matters that may need to be addressed by additional disciplinary proceedings.”
Gordon continues: “The MFDA took interim proceedings on an urgent basis in April and May of this year because of concerns we had identified during our ongoing investigation.”
As a result of those interim proceedings, the firm was suspended, but the regulator has not made any allegations in the case.
After W.H. Stuart was suspended, most of its clients’ accounts and most of its reps were transferred to Keybase Financial Group Inc. According to the bankruptcy documents filed in the case, Keybase then analyzed customer accounts to reconcile the assets that were actually transferred with the assets that were listed on W.H. Stuart’s books. That analysis found that although most of the 20,000 client accounts were complete, there were about 500 accounts (held by 439 clients) that “reflected either some level of discrepancy or unusual account activity.”
Of those 500 accounts, 44 had mutual fund assets that were transferred to Keybase but were missing other assets, such as cash, the filing says. The remaining 456 accounts had no assets transferred. Of the latter group, the MFDA IPC’s review of these accounts found that 106 of them are dormant — based on the fact that there had been no activity in the accounts for more than two years.
The MFDA IPC sent letters to ac-countholders in early August (apart from those apparently dormant accounts) advising of the claims process. Just prior to the bankruptcy order being issued, the MFDA IPC had received claims from 130 clients totalling $7.3 million, which had risen to $7.9 million by the time of the annual report.
If it turns out that there are valid claims on the MFDA IPC, this obviously will dent its efforts to build up the fund, which currently has a balance of slightly more than $35 million. In 2010, it was decided that the MFDA IPC should be boosted to $50 million, a process that began in 2011. IE