In a regulatory reprimand that lands like an overdue audit, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority has fined Barclays’ broker-dealer unit $325,000, accusing the firm of letting a mountain of compliance work pile up during the chaos of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Backlog Buried Under Pandemic Disruptions
According to a Tuesday acceptance, waiver and consent letter, Barclays Capital Inc. failed to collect or timely review roughly 8,200 account statements tied to nearly 700 employee outside brokerage accounts from July 2021 to June 2022.
As the backlog grew, FINRA says 161 trades slipped through without mandatory pre-clearance — trades that should have been screened for potential conflicts of interest or insider-trading risks.
The regulator said the logjam formed after Barclays’ offices shut down in March 2020, triggering “delays and organizational changes” that left the firm struggling to monitor employee trading activity. For more than two years, the missing paperwork accumulated like snowdrifts in a winter storm with no plows in sight.
