The onboarding course of included inputting confidential shopper info, comparable to shoppers’ names, social insurance coverage numbers, electronic mail addresses, and account numbers onto the WSTI portal.
Wealthsimple Advisor Providers maintains that the portal is safe. Nonetheless, it failed to make sure that shoppers had consented to offer their info to WSTI previous to the onboarding course of.
“Between February and August 2019, as a part of the Onboarding Course of, 20 Accepted Individuals, together with 19 Accepted Individuals registered with different MFDA Members, supplied WSTI with Consumer Data pertaining to a complete of roughly 2,990 shoppers,” the MFDA stated.
The MFDA additionally stated that between April 1 and Might 27, 2019, Wealthsimple Advisor Providers didn’t implement controls and supervision over its onboarding course of by “failing to forestall workers of an affiliated firm from viewing and accessing the system of one other MFDA Member.”
An accredited one that needed to affix Wealthsimple Advisor Providers was having technical difficulties with the onboarding course of, and requested one other accredited individual registered with a distinct MFDA member for assist.
