If you are working with a financial professional, or someone is trying to sell you an investment, be sure to check them out before handing over your hard-earned money.
Most securities firms, stockbrokers, investment advisers, and investment adviser representatives must be registered with the Securities Division in order to conduct business in South Carolina. Make sure your financial professional is properly registered. It is perhaps the most important step you can take to protect yourself and your money from a potential scam. Not all, but most scams involve unregistered entities, people and products.
While a single individual may be registered as a stockbroker, an investment adviser, an insurance agent or a commodities dealer, no one registry will tell you this. Investors must check multiple databases. Fortunately, there are several regulatory websites that allow you to do this.
Since annuities are regulated as insurance products in South Carolina, consumers should check the registration status of their agent with the SC Department of Insurance.
The SEC Action Lookup allows you to search by name for individuals that have been named in SEC court actions or administrative proceedings and had judgments or orders issued against them.
For information about actions taken by the South Carolina Securities Division against investment professional firms or individuals, see the Enforcement section of our website.
Financial services professionals may represent that they have professional designations that can be confusing. While some of these titles or designations accurately reflect the person’s expertise, others may be little more than marketing tools designed to convey the impression that the holder has more knowledge or experience than they actually have. FINRA has a page called Understanding Investment Professional Designations that lists each designation complete with a link to the organization that issued the designation. You can use this page to click through to an organization, check to see if the advisor really has the credentials they say they have and learn more about what those credentials mean.
If you have additional questions about a registration, please give us a call at (803) 734-9916. If you would like to register a complaint with the Securities Division, please see our online complaint form.
Office of the SC Attorney General
Securities Division
P. O. Box 11549
Columbia, SC 29211-1549
(803) 734-9916
For overnight delivery:
Securities Division
Rembert Dennis Building
1000 Assembly Street
Columbia, SC 29201
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