Each year, FINRA publishes its Annual Regulatory and Examination Priorities Letter to highlight issues of importance to FINRA’s regulatory programs, Regulatory and Examination Priorities Letter.
Many of the concerns in last year’s letter remain priority again for 2016. With the recent increase in interest rates, FINRA reiterates the worries mentioned in last year’s letter regarding interest rate-sensitive products. Firms are urged to evaluate their product offerings to determine where heightened concerns about interest rate sensitivity are relevant.
FINRA Chairman & CEO Richard Ketchum says, “Firm culture, ethics and conflicts of interest also remain a top priority for FINRA. A firm’s culture contributes to, and is also a product of, a firm’s supervision and its approaches to identifying and managing conflicts of interest and the ethical treatment of customers. Given the significant role culture plays in how a firm conducts its business, this year the letter addresses how we will formalize our assessment of firm culture to better understand how culture affects a firm’s compliance and risk management practices.”