FINRA Progress Report on FINRA360 Highlights Significant Changes

One-year Report Lays out Changes through the Organizational Review

WASHINGTON — The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) today released a comprehensive progress report summarizing the significant operational and regulatory changes FINRA has made in the first year of its ongoing FINRA360 organizational review.

“The first year of FINRA360 is already resulting in significant change across the organization,” FINRA CEO Robert Cook wrote in the report. “We have placed particular emphasis on changes that benefit investors, promote compliance, address duplicate operations, enhance transparency, foster engagement, or improve our day-to-day supervisory interactions with firms.”

Major actions to date include:

• integrating two Enforcement programs into a single unified structure;
• releasing an Examinations Findings Report detailing FINRA’s observations from the prior year’s examinations;
• publishing a summary of FINRA’s 2018 budget and financial guiding principles;
• launching a Small Firm Helpline to address routine questions about FINRA;
• creating an Innovation Outreach Initiative to address the growing activity in FinTech, cryptocurrencies and related issues;
• increasing funding for training of examiners and regulatory coordinators;
• updating the activities of FINRA’s advisory and governance committees and enhancing transparency regarding what they do and how interested parties can get involved; and
• further advancing FINRA’s risk-based approach to examinations and implementing certain process improvements in how FINRA interacts with member firms in the exam context.

As part of this ongoing initiative, FINRA continues to make organizational changes that will impact FINRA’s day-to-day interactions with member firms and investors, Cook noted in the report.

“A year into what I have often emphasized is a multi-year initiative, we have accomplished a great deal, but we still have much more work ahead of us,” Cook wrote in the report. “We are turning our attention in the coming year to our Examination program and a number of other areas where we think we can achieve additional meaningful change. These may include larger organizational changes as well as smaller improvements that collectively will have significant impacts on our day-to-day interactions with the firms we regulate and the investing public we protect. Expect more to come.”

FINRA is dedicated to investor protection and market integrity. It regulates one critical part of the securities industry – brokerage firms doing business with the public in the United States. FINRA, overseen by the SEC, writes rules, examines for and enforces compliance with FINRA rules and federal securities laws, registers broker-dealer personnel and offers them education and training, and informs the investing public. In addition, FINRA provides surveillance and other regulatory services for equities and options markets, as well as trade reporting and other industry utilities. FINRA also administers a dispute resolution forum for investors and brokerage firms and their registered employees. For more information, visit www.finra.org.