Pershing

You may come across a great customer service person as often as you come across a magical unicorn. I have three people that actually know what they are doing amongst the hundreds I have dealt with there over the years. I have had to work with Pershing for 16 years as my clearing firm and they are extremely difficult to work with on a daily basis. It is probably the big company mentality but their employees are mostly rude and the rules for processing client requests do not follow the law, state or federal. It just whatever covers their compliance, which is completely absurd. In short, if you choose to use Pershing as your clearing firm, be prepared to jump through hoops to satisfy their demands because they definitely do not act like YOU are their client.

Review: Pershing is currently the custodian on one of my client;s accounts. I am an advisor with UBS Investments. Our firm called and spoke with an associate on April 21st who explained that Pershing needed an original signature to process transfer paperwork in order to transfer the account out of Pershing. The client signed the paperwork and we sent it in. When I called and followed up with Pershing, they said that they lost the paperwork and that I should resend it but address it to a different department, the Securities Received Department. The client had to resign paperwork and then we overnighted the paperwork to them on June 25th. On July 8th, at 10:32 am, I spoke with [redacted] in Alternative Investments who said that they received the paperwork to transfer out but that it had to be initiated by the non acat transfer department. I called this department and was on hold for 48 minutes before a woman answered who did not speak English and then asked me to hold again. 10 minutes later, a different woman answered the phone and told me that she couldn't help me. It is illegal to deny a client the right to withdraw their assets from a firm or make it extremely difficult to transfer to a differnt firm. No one was helpful and had me running in circles so that they could keep my client's assets.Desired Settlement: I would like for someone to contact me and let me know that the assets have been transferred. My next step is contacting the SEC with explain their fraudulent practices and asset manipulation.

Business

Response:

Pershing LLC (“Pershing”) acknowledged receipt of the above referenced Complaint. As you may know, Pershing is a clearing firm. In that capacity, Pershing provides brokerage execution, clearance and investment products and services to brokerage firms and registered investment advisors (“RIAs”). The brokerage firms and RLAs that utilize Pershing’s clearing services are referred to as “introducing firms.”

You have asked Pershing to review its records and provide a response to the Complainant’s claim. First, we note that the Complainant, an employee of UBS Financial Services, Inc. (“UBS”), is not the owner of the account in question held at Pershing and it is unclear if Complainant is authorized to make this complaint on behalf of the account holder.

In any event, our records indicate that the account was not transferred to UBS due to a lack of proper documentation to authorize the transfer. On June 26, 2014, the account holder submitted a Change of Representative or Broker Dealer form relating to a single investment in the account known as the “Griffith American Fund.” However, this is not the correct documentation or process to initiate a transfer of the account. Rather, the process required to transfer all account assets from one firm (Pershing) to another (UBS) requires the execution of a customer account transfer form (“ACAT” form) by the account holder. An account transfer cannot occur without this express authorization by the account holder through the ACAT

process.

On July 21, 2014, we contacted the Complainant and advised her that the account holder would have to initiate an ACAT process in order to transfer the account from Pershing t0 UBS. Complainant advised us that an ACAT transfer was initiated previously, but our records do not show a previous ACAT transfer request being submitted. We then requested that the Complainant contact the transfer group at UBS to facilitate this process, to provide additional details of the previously submitted ACAT to assist us with our investigation, and/or to submit a new ACAT form to initiate the transfer. As of the date of this letter, our records indicate that there are no pending ACAT transfer requests for the account referenced in the Complaint. We attempted to contact the Complainant on July 24 and July 28 to request an update on this matter, but she has not been cooperative with our efforts to resolve this matter.

Pershing will consider this matter closed until such time when additional information is received from UBS transfers via the ACAT process. Of course, you may contact me.