Guidance

FINRA has initiated a multi-phased effort to overhaul its registration and disclosure programs, including the Central Registration Depository (CRD) -- the central licensing and registration system that FINRA operates for the U.S. securities industry and its regulators, and that provides the backbone of BrokerCheck. In June 2018, we implemented the first phase of the transformation through a new WebCRD interface that highlights important information or activities requiring the immediate attention of firms, branches and individuals.

The OATS Compliance Report Card is a monthly status report on the number and percentage of:

On this Page

• Honoraria
• Reimbursable Expenses
• Tax Information

Honoraria

FINRA will pay arbitrators honoraria in accordance with the Codes of Procedure. The following page answers the most commonly asked questions regarding honoraria.

While Americans as a whole are feeling less financial stress, making ends meet remains a daily struggle for women, millennials, African-Americans, Hispanics and those without a high school education, according to the NFCS, one of the largest and most comprehensive financial capability studies in the United States. The study measures four key components of financial capability—making ends meet, planning ahead, managing financial products and financial knowledge and decision making.

Background

In 2018, FINRA and the Securities Industry/Regulatory Council on Continuing Education (CE Council) launched an initiative to evaluate enhancements to the CE Program. The overall goal of the program review is to reflect advances in technology and learning theory while continuing to ensure that registered persons receive timely education on the securities business and the regulatory requirements applicable to their respective functions.

The Daily Total Summary Data and Detail Data Download files for the OATS Compliance Report Card provide underlying totals and detail of the data contained in the monthly summary OATS Compliance Report Card.

The tables below represent the data within the Daily Totals Summary Report Card and the Detail Data Download files.

Summary Definitions and Data Fields

The Municipal Primary Offering Disclosure Report displays statistics about transactions your firm effected with customers during the securities’ Primary Offering Disclosure Period. This report is designed to aid firms in monitoring their compliance with Rule G-32(a) customer disclosure requirements, which apply to all broker-dealers selling offered municipal securities.

FINRA evaluates 11 broad risk categories as a foundation to monitor and assess member firm¹ risk and inform our risk-based examination program. We are sharing this risk framework and risk assessment methodology as part of our FINRA Forward Initiative to provide greater transparency into our risk assessment processes to further empower member firm compliance.

Regulatory Obligations

FINRA Rule 2090 (Know Your Customer) requires member firms and their associated persons to use reasonable diligence to determine the “essential facts” about every customer and “the authority of each person acting on behalf of such customer.” Regulatory Notice 11-02 (SEC Approves Consolidated FINRA Rules Governing Know-Your-Customer and Suitability Obligations) advised that firms verify the essential facts about a customer “at intervals reasonably cal

The MSRB Due Diligence Report Card is a monthly status report to help firms monitor their issuances being brought to market in order to support firm's due diligence efforts.  The report shows how many total issuances have been brought to market and which of those had issuers with previous issuances in the market that are lacking current audited financial filings (LCF) on EMMA.  If any of the issuances being brought to market have a previously issued CUSIP LCF, then the current issuance is identified on this report card.

The report offers two alternative views:

Background

Until mid-2017, FINRA maintained two distinct enforcement teams within the organization—one handling disciplinary actions related to trading-based matters found through our market surveillance and trading examination programs, and the other handling cases referred from other regulatory oversight divisions within FINRA, such as sales practice examinations and our Office of Fraud Detection and Market Intelligence. Through FINRA360, we analyzed stated firm concerns that these dual programs sometimes resulted in duplication of effort and inconsistency of results.