Just as the Securities and Exchange Commission is starting to take a closer look at the increasing amount of trading in private company stock, a new startup that's been in stealth mode since August, 2009 is preparing to launch another way to trade private shares. The company is Xpert Financial and it brings to the table a tacit stamp of approval from the SEC and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority ( FINRA ), or at least approval to begin operations as an alternative trading system ( ATS ). Existing secondary markets for private shares such as SharesPost and SecondMarket do not have the same standing in the eyes of the SEC, although it is not clear how much that matters at this point. Xpert Financial will operate an electronic trading platform for private company shares. It is a registered broker-dealer with FINRA and it recently got approval from the SEC to run an alternative trading platform. Xpert Financial will be the first ATS approved for private stock sales. More common alternative trading systems are ECNs, or Electronic Communication Networks, for publicly traded securities. As an ATS, Expert Financial cannot call itself an exchange, which is why it changed its name from Xchange.