Registration and Post-Registration

The whole unit on one sheet: how an agent registers, what the registration owes afterward, and how it ends.

How Does an Agent Register?

• It is unlawful to transact as an unregistered agent, and equally unlawful for a firm to employ one. Both face liability.
• Form U4 is filed by the firm on the agent's behalf, with a consent to service of process appointing the Administrator to receive legal process. That consent is one-time, irrevocable, and survives termination.
• Registration is effective at noon on the 30th day and expires December 31.
• Registration is tied to an employer. There is no free-floating registration, and leaving the firm makes it inactive until the agent re-associates.
• A broker-dealer's registration automatically constitutes registration of its partners, officers, and directors who act as agents. An issuer's does not get that shortcut.

What Must Stay Current?

• File a correcting amendment promptly whenever U4 information becomes materially inaccurate: a felony charge, a complaint, an address or name change, or a financial disclosure.
• A felony charge triggers the amendment. The agent does not wait for a conviction.
• Triple notification: when an agent begins or ends a connection, or begins or stops the activities that make them an agent, the agent, the former employer, and the new employer must each notify the Administrator promptly. Failure by any one, including the old firm, is its own violation.

Does an Agent Face a Financial Requirement?

• No. An agent has no net capital or financial requirement of any kind. That authority reaches broker-dealers (minimum net capital, never above the SEC's) and investment advisers (minimum financial requirements) only.
• An agent with custody or discretion can still be required to post a bond, and an appropriate deposit of cash or securities must be accepted in its place.

How Does a Registration End?

• Disciplinary action (deny, suspend, revoke, bar, censure, condition, restrict) needs a public-interest finding AND a statutory ground. Cancellation needs neither.
• Grounds include filing deficiencies, willful violations, a felony or securities-related misdemeanor within 10 years, an injunction, a prior order of this state's Administrator, dishonest or unethical conduct, the agent's own insolvency, lack of qualifications, and failure to pay a fee.
• Failure to supervise reaches only a broker-dealer (or an adviser as to its representatives). It never reaches an individual agent directly.
• Cancellation applies when the registrant no longer exists, ceased business, is adjudicated mentally incompetent or under a guardian, or cannot be located.
• Withdrawal takes effect 30 days after filing unless a proceeding is pending, and the Administrator may still act on willful violations for 1 year afterward.

Which Numbers Must You Lock In?

Which Gotchas Are Tested Most?

• Any felony is a ground, but only securities-related misdemeanors are. A plain DUI is not.
• No registration between firms means no business. The registration goes inactive immediately and must become effective at the new firm first.
• Withdrawal is not a clean escape. The classic scenario has the Administrator discovering willful violations six months later, and the 1-year window still reaches them.
• A summary order is triggered by a pending proceeding, not by an emergency.

One-Breath Recap

An agent registers on Form U4 through the employing firm, with an irrevocable consent to service of process, effective at noon on the thirtieth day and expiring every December 31. The registration belongs to one employer, goes inactive the moment the agent leaves, and demands three separate notifications on any firm change, while a felony charge alone forces a prompt correcting amendment. An agent carries no capital requirement at all, though custody or discretion can still require a bond, while discipline needs the public interest plus a ground, cancellation needs neither, and a withdrawal takes thirty days but leaves a full year of exposure for willful violations.

Need more than the recap? Read the full Registration and Post-Registration unit.