News & Events

The SEC's whistleblower program, as outlined in the Dodd-Frank Act, has a very simple origin story. Work by an outside analyst, which was presented repeatedly to the commission and could have brought the Madoff fraud to light, was repeatedly ignored.

Last week we got FINRA's 2016 priorities, and this week the SEC announced theirs.

New Areas of Focus Include Liquidity Controls, Public Pension Advisers, Product Promotion, Exchange-Traded Funds and Variable Annuities

FINRA released its priorities for 2016 this week, with many new priorities appearing on this year’s list. While many of the same (or similar) target areas appear, we wanted to highlight a few new ones that may be of interest to you.

FINRA’s 2016 Regulatory and Examination Priorities Letter identifies both new areas of focus as well as areas of recurring concern. We first address three broad issues—culture, conflicts of interest and ethics; supervision, risk management and controls; and liquidity— and then discuss more narrowly focused topics. As always, there is a tension between our desire to be brief with this letter while also addressing the many areas of potential concern that can arise across the breadth of the securities industry.