An arbitration panel has granted a former Merrill Lynch junior broker\u2019s request to clear her record of a client complaint after they found \u201ccredible\u201d her claim that she had merely been providing administrative support for a senior advisor.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Amber Stoll, who left Merrill last year for Cetera Investment Services in Overland Park, Kansas, filed to clear her record in January. The complaint, which settled for $675,000 of the $1 million in requested damages, was tied to a rollover recommendation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The customer claimed that the broker failed to act in his best interest in an August 2021 recommendation related to the liquidation of a pension plan, according to Stoll\u2019s BrokerCheck record, which has no other disclosures over her eight-year career.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Stoll told a Financial Industry Regulatory Authority panel of three public arbitrators that she had joined Merrill\u2019s training program in September 2020 and due to Covid-19 restrictions worked remotely for almost a year. During that time, she \u201crelied heavily\u201d on the guidance and supervision of an unidentified \u201csenior financial advisor.\u201d<\/p>\n
The dispute centered on a withdrawal form used to initiate a rollover of the customer\u2019s 457 deferred-compensation plan, which was administered by the same government agency as his pension.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Stoll said she completed and emailed the form at the senior advisor\u2019s discretion after he discussed the customer\u2019s retirement benefits on a June 2021 telephone call. She had confirmed with him that it was the right form because Covid-related restrictions had blocked the agency from accepting calls to initiate rollovers, according to the award\u2019s recounting of her petition.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The form, which has since been updated to warn against using it for 457 transactions, did not indicate that it would affect the pension, Stoll said.<\/p>\n
Stoll said she received no confirmation of the transaction\u2019s outcome and learned that the pension had been liquidated during a review meeting in early 2024.<\/p>\n
Stoll\u2019s lawyer, Derek C. Anderson of Winget, Spadafora & Schwartzberg in Boulder, Colorado, did not respond immediately to a request for comment. Neither did a Merrill spokesperson.<\/p>\n
Stoll first registered with Edward D. Jones & Co. in 2018 before moving two years later to Merrill.<\/p>\n