According to a new study by Eversheds Sutherland, FINRA disciplinary actions show a surge in enforcement activity in 2020. What caught my eye was a dramatic increase in fines related to variable annuity cases—a 1062% increase! To put that in context, overall fines increased to $57 million from $40 million in 2019, a 43% increase. […]
This February, FINRA released the 2021 Report on its Examination and Risk Monitoring Program. The Report is designed to inform member firms’ compliance programs by providing annual insights from FINRA’s ongoing regulatory operations. The Report combines and replaces the two previously published annual reports: Examination Findings and Observations and the Risk Monitoring and Examination Program […]
In January 2020, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) released it’s 2020 Risk Monitoring and Examination Priorities Letter highlighting areas of focus for their risk monitoring, surveillance, and examination programs as well as new and emerging areas. As previously outlined in a December 2019 press release, FINRA President and CEO Robert Cook noted that significant changes had been […]
Asset Management Compliance One of our clients came to us with a problem; how to comply with FINRA’s customer asset transmit rules for managed money and mutual funds. Our solution: an asset management workflow for tracking, monitoring, and reporting on the location and status of customer funds. We started the conversation by identifying how the […]
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) regulates 3,700 member firms and nearly 630,000 registered reps and conducts over 2000 member firm examinations each year. FINRA conducts routine examinations of broker-dealers checking for compliance with industry rules and regulations. Depending on the firm, these routine investigations (or more commonly referred to as FINRA audits) occur once […]