DISCLOSURES
BUSINESS CONTINUITY PLAN DISCLOSURE
FOG Equities will seek to quickly recover and resume business operations after a significant business disruption and respond by safeguarding our employees and property, making a financial and operational assessment, protecting the firm’s books and records, and allowing our customers to transact business. In short, our Business Continuity Plan is designed to permit our firm to resume operations as quickly as possible, given the scope and severity of the significant business disruption.
Our Business Continuity Plan addresses: data backup and recovery; all mission critical systems; financial and operational assessments; alternative communications with customers, employees, and regulators; alternate physical location of employees; critical supplier, contractor, bank and counter-party impact; regulatory reporting; and assuring our customers prompt access to their funds and securities if we are unable to continue our business.
Our clearing firm, Wedbush, maintains a robust BCP. While every emergency situation poses unique problems based on external factors, such as time of day and the severity of the disruption, we have been advised by our clearing firm that its objective is to restore its own operations and be able to complete existing transactions and accept new transactions and payments anywhere from instantaneous to approximately four hours. Your orders and requests for funds and securities could be delayed during this period.
VARYING DISRUPTIONS
Significant business disruptions can vary in their scope, such as only our firm, a single building housing our firm, the business district where our firm is located, the city where we are located, or the whole region. Within each of these areas, the severity of the disruption can also vary from minimal to severe. In a disruption to only our firm or a building housing our firm, we will transfer our operations to a local site when needed and expect to recover and resume business within three hours. In a disruption affecting our business district, city, or region, we will transfer our operations to a site outside of the affected area, and recover and resume business within one day. In either situation, we plan to continue in business, transfer operations to our clearing firm if necessary, and notify you through any communications available. If the significant business disruption is so severe that it prevents us from remaining in business, we will assure our customer’s prompt access to their funds and securities.
AML CIP DISCLOSURE
To help the U.S. government fight the funding of terrorism and money laundering activities, Federal law requires all U.S. financial institutions, such as FOG Equities, to obtain, verify and record information that identifies each individual or institution that establishes a customer relationship with such financial institutions.
If a client enters into a customer relationship with FOG Equities, which includes opening an account at FOG Equities, we will request certain financial and legal information about such client, including such client’s legal name, tax identification number and address, and the identity of any individuals with any authority or control over such client. We also verify such information to the extent required as follows:
Taking steps to check the information provided – to verify that the clients are who they say they are.
Consult applicable governmental agency lists of known or suspected criminals, terrorists and terrorist organizations to determine if anyone on any such list is attempting to open or maintain an account.
Conduct, in certain instances, additional due diligence when accounts are opened for foreign persons, institutions or other clients.
The U.S. Department of the Treasury, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) and FINRA rules already require clients to provide most of this information.
If a client refuses to provide the information requested or a client’s identity cannot be verified, FOG Equities may not be able to establish or maintain a business relationship with such client. If such client has already established a relationship with FOG Equities, we may have to terminate such relationship. If a client establishes a relationship with FOG Equities and refuses to provide this information, we may be required to report such refusal to appropriate governmental authorities.
Pursuant to U.S. regulations issued under section 311 of the USA PATRIOT Act, 31 CFR 103.192, we are prohibited from opening or maintaining a correspondent account for, or on behalf of the “Specified Institutions” or Jurisdictions of Primary Money Laundering Concern (https://www.fincen.gov/resources/statutes-and-regulations/311-special-measures). The regulations also require us to notify you that your correspondent account with our financial institution may not be used to provide the Specified Institutions with access to our financial institution. If we become aware that the Specified Institutions are indirectly using the correspondent account you hold at our financial institution, we will be required to take appropriate steps to prevent such access, including terminating your account.
PRIVACY POLICY
Because FOG deals only with institutional entities as defined in FINRA Rule 4512 and other broker dealers, the Firm is exempt from most provisions of the Graham Leach Bliley Act and the provisions of Regulation S-P. As such the Firm does not have a disclosure requirement for privacy statements.
Notwithstanding the foregoing, FOG has a commitment to the protection of our client and counterparty privacy and confidentiality of client information and has in place systems and processes that isolate and protect our institutional customer’s proprietary and or confidential information from release to the general public. We do collect certain information from our customers in order to process their accounts and enact requested trades on their behalf. We do not release, resale or broadcast client information and our systems are set up to protect client confidential information. We will, however, release this information to federal, state and our DEA or SRO as required by law and statute. We may not be able to notify you of any such release, however, we will notify all of our counterparties if there is a resale of counterparty information to the public.
ORDER ROUTING (NMS RULE 606)
At the current time, the firm is exempt from the requirements of Rule 606 reporting. If that should change, our reports or the location you would go to access those report would be posted here.
NYSE CHICAGO
FOG Equities, LLC is a member of NYSE Chicago. For more information please see https://www.nyse.com/markets/nyse-chicago.
FINRA
FOG Equities, LLC is a member of FINRA. For more information please see www.finra.org or www.brokercheck.finra.org.
NASDAQ
FOG Equities, LLC is a member of Nasdaq. For more information please see https://www.nasdaqtrader.com/Trader.aspx?id=TradingUSEquities.
SIPC
FOG Equities, LLC is a member of SIPC. For information regarding protections related to SIPC, please see www.sipc.org.
AFFILIATIONS
FOG Equities LLC is under common control with the following broker-dealers: Casey Securities LLC, RFA Securities LLC, and Hamilton Executions LLC.