Jeff Harpel

Working with a variety of clients gives me and Oyster the ability to see, learn about and evaluate multiple systems and processes. This knowledge lets us disseminate best practices, benefiting our clients directly and, I believe, serving to improve the industry as a whole.

Jeff is a seasoned industry professional with over 30 years of expertise in accounting, finance, and auditing in the securities brokerage industry. Jeff’s experience includes a comprehensive understanding of securities operations and regulations, experience in dealing with regulatory bodies, examiners and auditors and a thorough command of internal controls, financial systems, and merger conversion activities. Prior to joining Oyster, Jeff was Director of Regulatory Accounting and Financial Compliance for the retail broker-dealers of Wachovia Securities (now Wells Fargo Advisors) ensuring compliance with net capital, customer protection, FOCUS, and other financial rules and reporting requirements. At Oyster, Jeff’s experience has been utilized as the FinOp for a number of brokerage firm clients as well as on numerous regulatory reporting engagements.

Expertise

• Serves as the FinOp for a number of brokerage firm clients of Oyster Consulting
• Provides net capital, reserve computation, FOCUS reporting and other regulatory solutions and services to broker-dealers
• Provides financial, accounting and internal control solutions and services to securities brokerage and financial services industry clients
• Served as Chief Financial Officer for a clearing broker dealer with approximately $600B in assets
• Conceived, designed and implemented, with others, a securities brokerage clearing subsidiary to clear transactions and custody assets for internal and external broker dealers enabling the growth of the correspondent clearing business for a national firm
• Key contributor to due diligence efforts for several mergers of various broker-dealers, banks and independent firms
• Planned, designed and executed the integration of accounting processes, systems, and staff following multiple acquisitions, building a new department each time by combining the best of each company, eliminating redundancies, reducing costs and improving efficiencies
• Implemented a new in-house regulatory financial reporting system to automate the Customer and Proprietary Accounts of Introducing Brokers (PAIB) reserve computations required by SEC Rule 15c3-3
• Ensured compliance with various regulatory rules including the financial responsibility rule (SEC Rule 15c3-1, Net Capital computation) and customer protection rule (SEC Rule 15c3-3, Customer and PAIB reserve computations)
• Provided senior management of a national firm with analysis of regulatory impact of proposed firm actions and impact of proposed regulations avoiding potential fines or sanctions

Career Highlights

• Senior Vice President, Director of Regulatory Accounting and Financial Compliance, WS
• Chief Financial Officer of First Clearing LLC
• Senior Vice President, Manager of Finance, WS
• Managing Director, Controller, WFS
• Managing Director, Director of Internal Audit, WFS Director of Regulatory Accounting and Financial Compliance
• Senior Vice President, Manager – Regulatory Accounting and Financial Systems, WFS
• Vice President, Assistant Controller, Butcher & Singer
• Accounting Manager – Systems and Procedures, Butcher & Singer