ComplianceX (October 28, 2011) -- With skepticism of Wall Street running high, investors who have a beef with their brokerage firm are opting overwhelming to have their cases heard by arbitration panels that have no ties to the big banks.

Linda Fienberg, president of dispute resolution at the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, the Wall Street-financed regulatory body that oversees arbitration, said on Thursday that 77 percent of eligible investors were opting for a new program that allowed them to have their claim against Wall Street heard by a three-person panel with no links to the financial industry.

“It is higher than I anticipated,” she told a crowd of 200 or so lawyers gathered here for the annual meeting of the Public Investors Arbitration Bar Association, an industry group that represents lawyers who sue Wall Street firms. “I would have thought it would have been 60 to 65 percent.”

Investors who feel they have been wronged by Wall Street have one main course of action: arbitration.

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