You get that call, and your heart drops. You knew that a regulatory exam was on the horizon, but you have put off thinking about it. Now, you are face-to-face with an upcoming FINRA examination, and the panic has set in.
Last month, the SEC’s Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations (OCIE) issued a Risk Alert regarding examinations that will focus on broker-dealers’ compliance with Regulation Best Interest. The SEC wanted to make clear that the Regulation Best Interest compliance date of June 30, 2020 will not be extended. The OCIE will begin examinations with the program and will continue to add this element as part of exams for one year after the implementation date.
Your firm is beginning to get in the groove since the shelter-in-place orders have been implemented. In the past, you have worked from home on certain days, but the transition to full-time teleworking, homeschooling, and pet sitting has been a challenging reality. Then surprise! You get a call from your regulatory coordinator that FINRA or the SEC has decided to conduct a regulatory exam of your firm starting now.
FINRA recently released a podcast called “What to Expect: The 2020 Exam and Risk Monitoring Program“. It provides a wealth of information from three members of the Member Supervision Senior Leadership on what to expect from the Examination and Risk Monitoring program in 2020. Here are a few highlights from the podcast. Read More…
At the end of each calendar year, the Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations (“OCIE”) staff of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) publish a list of topics for the next year’s examination priorities. Not so surprisingly, the first item for the 2019 exam priorities listed is “fees and expenses”. This topic was also the highlight of an OCIE Risk Alert in April 2018 as one of the most frequent compliance issues identified in Examinations of Investment Advisers.
Recently, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (“FINRA”) released a report detailing its observations from its cycle examination program. FINRA hopes the report will assist broker-dealers in strengthening their compliance with securities rules and regulations. FINRA noted that the report does not represent a complete inventory of observations about the industry as a whole, does not imply that any issues discussed exist at any particular firms, and should not be read as creating new legal or regulatory requirements or new interpretations of existing Read More…