May 2019 Board Update

FINRA CEO Robert Cook, Chairman Bill Heyman, Board members and FINRA staff provide updates from the May 2019 FINRA Board of Governors meeting.

May 14, 2019

FINRA’s Board of Governors met last week in New York, and I am writing to share with you some updates from our discussions.

During the meeting, the Board’s Audit Committee reviewed a draft of FINRA’s Annual Financial Report, which the full Board will review and consider for approval prior to its publication this summer. In addition, Executive Vice President of Enforcement Susan Schroeder provided the Board’s Regulatory Operations and Oversight Committee with a status report on the ongoing 529 plan self-reporting initiative and discussed proposed guidance on when Enforcement would grant firms credit for extraordinary cooperation during the enforcement process. That guidance will be published in a future Regulatory Notice.

In my pre-meeting email to firms, I mentioned that the Board’s Regulatory Policy Committee planned to review two rule proposals—proposed amendments to the Discovery Guide to require the production of insurance information in arbitration, and modifications to the proposed outside activities requirements rule as the result of a retrospective rule review. After some thoughtful discussion, the committee directed FINRA staff to gather more information so that it could reconsider these two proposals at a future Board meeting.

For more information about the discussions that took place during the May Board of Governors meeting, please watch the May 2019 Board Report video. More information regarding the Board's operations, including the membership and responsibilities of its committees, is available at www.finra.org/governance.

Sincerely,

Robert W. Cook
President and CEO