Complaints, reversals, corporate actions, and insolvency

Operate customer remediation, immutable corrections, corporate-action allocations, disputes, service failures, broker or platform default, and orderly transfer or wind-down.

Exceptional events are part of the product, not back-office edge cases. Design them before launch so customers receive consistent treatment when a trade is disputed, cash moves incorrectly, an issuer acts, or a critical firm fails.

One case record, four workflows

Workflow	Trigger	Primary outcome
Complaint	Customer expresses dissatisfaction and expects a response or remedy	fair investigation, response, redress, and escalation rights
Reversal/correction	Duplicate, rejected, erroneous, or returned movement	compensating entry with full lineage
Corporate action	Issuer/exchange/CSD event changes rights or value	accurate entitlement, election, allocation, and notice
Insolvency/wind-down	Platform, broker, custodian, bank, or critical provider failure	protect records/assets and support transfer or return

Complaints standard

Accept complaints through accessible channels without requiring legal terminology. Record the customer's account, issue, desired outcome, affected transactions, vulnerability needs, received date, jurisdiction, owner, due date, communications, evidence, decision, remedy, and external escalation route.

Receive

acknowledge + preserve evidence

↓

Triage

harm · urgency · jurisdiction

↓

Investigate

ledger · order · call · provider

↓

Decide

facts + rule + consistent remedy

↓

Respond

plain language + escalation rights

↓

Learn

root cause + control change

Pause destruction schedules for relevant evidence. Separate investigators from the original decision where practical, monitor overdue cases and repeat causes, and test whether similar customers suffered the same issue.

Reversals and corrections

Never delete or overwrite a posted financial record to make the balance look right.

Link the correction to the original order, transaction, external reference, and case.
Post equal and opposite or otherwise defined compensating entries.
Record reason code, amount, currency, FX treatment, approver, and effective/accounting dates.
Recalculate wallet, holding, fee, tax, and statement effects deterministically.
Notify the customer when the correction affects their position, cash, tax, or prior confirmation.
Reconcile the correction to bank, broker, custodian, and general-ledger evidence.

Timeouts and unknown payment states require status investigation, not an automatic retry with a new idempotency key.

Corporate actions

Stage	Required control
Capture	Independent issuer/exchange/custodian source; event type, key dates, terms, and source version
Eligibility	Record-date position including unsettled treatment and market rules
Election	Clear options, deadline earlier than custodian cut-off, acknowledgement, and default option
Allocation	Deterministic calculation, rounding, tax, FX, fractional and residual treatment
Reconciliation	Aggregate entitlement to custodian receipt and sum of customer allocations
Communication	Announcement, reminder, confirmation, payment/allocation, correction, and cancellation

Support dividends, splits/consolidations, rights issues, tender offers, mergers, symbol changes, suspensions, and delistings according to the market agreement. Preserve each event version; issuer terms can change after the first announcement.

Use signed corporateaction.* and dividend.paid events as notifications, then retrieve authoritative state through the Corporate Governance API and deduplicate by event ID. Webhooks are delivered at least once; instruction acceptance is established only by the election or vote resource's custodian status and evidence fields.

Insolvency and orderly wind-down

Plan separately for the failure of MyStocks, the partner, a broker/custodian, a settlement bank, and a critical technology provider.

Capability	Minimum preparation
Asset identification	Current beneficial-owner ledger, pooled custody mapping, cash and unsettled positions
Data portability	Tested export with customer, holdings, tax lots, orders, events, restrictions, and evidence
Authority	Named decision makers, administrator/regulator contacts, and communication approval
Continuity	Read-only access, reconciliation, corporate actions, statements, and complaints during trading suspension
Transfer/return	Receiving broker/custodian process, identity matching, fees, residual cash, and fractional treatment
Customer communication	Fact-based status, asset location, expected next step, limitations, and complaint route

Do not promise that customer assets are bankruptcy remote, immediately portable, or covered by an investor-protection scheme unless market-specific legal analysis and executed arrangements support the claim.

Severity and response targets

Severity	Example	Initial action
Critical	Client-money shortfall, sanctions breach, widespread wrong allocation	stop affected mutations; executive, compliance, and operations escalation
High	Material customer loss, missed action deadline, repeated duplicate payment	contain, preserve evidence, identify affected population
Medium	Individual incorrect fee, delayed statement, isolated webhook failure	correct within case SLA and monitor recurrence
Low	Explanation or service-quality complaint without financial impact	acknowledge and resolve through normal workflow

Production evidence

Complaint policy, jurisdictional timelines, ombudsman/regulator routes, and management reporting.
Reversal reason codes, approval matrix, immutable ledger test, and customer notice templates.
Corporate-action source hierarchy, election controls, allocation tests, and reconciliation samples.
Broker/custodian/platform failure playbooks and a completed tabletop exercise.
Tested customer and position export with checksum and receiving-party handoff procedure.

See Webhooks, Daily reconciliation, and Customer ownership for the underlying evidence chain.