Guidance

Request for TRACE Reporting Exemption Under FINRA Rule 6732

As of March 14, 2025, Texas’ and Washington’s Form BR settings were updated to reflect that they now accept Residential Supervisory Locations.

Member firms should be aware of an ongoing phishing campaign involving fraudulent emails targeting executives and purporting to be from FINRA employees, with the goal of harvesting credentials. As indicated by the full, expanded email address hidden under a masked email display name, these emails are not from FINRA, and firms should delete them and consider blocking the fraudulent domains.

Firms could be vulnerable to a newly discovered social engineering scheme in which bad actors trick customer support personnel into downloading and executing malware. This Alert describes the scheme and provides recommendations to help firms protect themselves from the threat.

The Cyber and Analytics Unit (CAU) within FINRA’s Member Supervision program is highlighting recent updates to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) 2.0, which is a resource designed to help organizations manage and reduce cybersecurity risks, regardless of their degree of cybersecurity sophistication.

As we observe National Consumer Protection Week amid a changing financial fraud landscape, the time is ripe to talk about the ways in which investors can protect themselves from scams. On this episode, a member of the FINRA Investor Education Foundation team joins us to talk about how we can all become more informed and vigilant in today's complex financial world.

As the financial industry continues to evolve, it's important to stay ahead of emerging risks and trends. On this episode of FINRA Unscripted, we sit down with the leaders of FINRA's new Strategic Intelligence and Analytics team to discuss how they are working to identify and analyze these industry developments.

As a self-regulatory organization, information sharing is key to FINRA's pursuit of its mission of investor protection and market integrity. The 2025 FINRA Regulatory Oversight Report provides just that. On this episode, FINRA’s regulatory leaders join us to discuss key takeaways from the report.

The 2025 FINRA Annual Regulatory Oversight Report (the Report) provides member firms with insight into findings from the recent oversight activities of FINRA’s Member Supervision, Market Regulation and Enforcement programs (collectively, regulatory operations programs).

With a new year come new financial challenges, resolutions, and investment risks. On this episode, FINRA’s Head of Investor Education shares insights on leveraging market trends and tools to achieve your money goals in 2025.

Behind every market transaction lies a wealth of data. But how can we harness this information? On this episode, members of the Market Regulation and Transparency Services team discuss periodic aggregate market data sets, including some new data recently added to FINRA's website, and how FINRA makes this information available to the public.

In 2022, FINRA developed an enterprise-wide strategy to ensure preparation for an evolving crypto asset regulatory landscape with the creation of the Crypto Hub, the Blockchain Lab and the Crypto Asset Investigations Team. On this episode, which originally aired in August 2023, we learn more about the strategy and the role of the Hub.

Learn how to use the Non-registered Locations with RSL Status report template available in FINRA Gateway by watching this short video (2:23 minutes). The report template can be used to identify associated persons’ office of employment addresses marked as non-registered, private residences with outstanding “Yes” or “No” responses.

Learn how to amend a Form U4 filing to complete the RSL Question by watching this short (2:04 minutes) video.

Learn how to submit a Form BR amendment related to the Residential Supervisory Location (RSL) rule. In this short video (2:02 minutes), FINRA demonstrates a scenario for an existing branch that was previously filed with FINRA, the NYSE, and a state, but is now an RSL for FINRA and the NYSE, but not with the state.

FINRA prepared this quick reference guide to help firms that have identified a location as a non-registered private residence to answer the RSL question on Form U4.

In the securities world today, there is little daylight between money laundering and fraud. On this episode, we learn how FINRA’s Special Investigations Unit works to detect and investigate cases of illicit finance and market abuse, as well as how they proactively identify and mitigate threats.

Companies that use Fortinet’s FortiManager product could be exposed to a remote, unauthenticated attacker executing arbitrary code or commands due to a critical product vulnerability (CVE-2024-47575), according to two recent alerts from the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

Gen X is often called the Forgotten Generation given how often they’re overlooked in favor of conversation around boomers, millennials or now even Gen Z. But on this episode, Gen X is the one in the spotlight as we dig into the financial health of those born between 1965 and 1980 and, importantly, their perception of their financial well-being.

FINRA alerts member firms that the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) has filed a rule change for immediate effectiveness to harmonize NYSE Rule 3110 (Supervision) with FINRA Rule 3110 (Supervision) to permit eligible NYSE member organizations to participate in FINRA’s Remote Inspections Pilot Program and to adopt FINRA’s Residential Supervisory Location (RSL) classification.

The term “metaverse” has attracted significant attention and curiosity in recent years from the media, entertainment and technology sectors. Though the term has no concrete definition, and interpretations may differ, the metaverse is generally viewed as the next evolution of today’s internet.

On Oct. 16, 2024, the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released Cybersecurity Advisory - AA24-290A, which provides threat actors’ tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) and indicators of compromise (IOCs) associated with Iranian cyber actors. In light of the historical proclivity of Iranian threat actors targeting the financial services industry, FINRA is sharing this information with member firms.

Why do we engage with scammers? What makes one person more likely to engage than the next? Of those that engage, what makes someone more likely to lose money? On this episode, we dig into the research on these important questions with three academics in the field.