Compliance

The House Financial Services Committee on Wednesday approved a slew of bills that would slow the pace of regulatory proceedings to expand advisors' fiduciary responsibilities and relax registration requirements, among other measures.

With FINRA clearly stating its social media guidelines, the question many advisors are asking themselves is this: what do I do now? Luckily, there are three simple steps to avoiding regulatory fines and keeping your advisors actively online.

A targeted examination letter probes firms for detailed information on their social media use as the regulator grows more serious about enforcement.

The mutual-fund industry, in what may be the last round of lobbying against tighter rules for money-market funds, rejected a scaled-back proposal to force only the riskiest funds to give up their stable $1 share price.

It’s no secret that the Investment Company Institute is opposed to proposals by the Securities and Exchange Commission to float the net asset value of money market funds and ICI President and CEO Paul Stevens today reiterated the group’s stance on the SEC’s proposal.

The Securities and Exchange Commission would like to hear from advisors. That was the resounding message of a speech delivered Tuesday by Norm Champ, the director of the SEC's Division of Investment Management, the unit of the commission that oversees federally registered investment advisors.

When the Department of Labor produces its controversial proposal to extend fiduciary responsibilities to certain advisors to retirement plans later this year, the plan will come with a robust economic analysis making the case for new regulations, along with targeted exemptions to the rules, the senior official who is leading the effort said on Tuesday.

In the first case of a state taking on bank consultants, New York regulators have banned Deloitte Financial Advisory Services from financial consulting for one year.

In a keynote address kicking off the Insured Retirement Institute's Government, Legal and Regulatory conference, Atkins, now the CEO of Patomak Global Partners, offered a round critique of the Dodd-Frank Act and the myriad rulemaking proceedings that it set in motion.

A top official for the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority resigned after the agency was informed he was indicted for felony theft and charitable bingo fraud in 1993, the year he joined the agency.

A new Portland, Ore.-based investment shop has bagged its first sub-advisory mandate courtesy of its affiliate.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has settled an enforcement proceeding against eight former directors of five Morgan Keegan open- and closed-end funds that were heavily invested in securities backed by subprime mortgages.

Eight former directors overseeing mutual funds for Morgan Keegan & Co. settled, without paying any penalties, U.S. regulatory claims that they allowed assets backed by subprime mortgages to be overvalued as the housing market collapsed in 2007.

In an exclusive interview, Skip Schweiss, managing director of advisor advocacy at TD Ameritrade Institutional, spoke about the tensions, dangers and future outlook of the fiduciary standard being debated in Washington -- and how the decision might drastically alter the advisory landscape.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has approved new FINRA rules that prevent mutual fund and hedge fund industry personnel from serving as public arbitrators, effective July 1.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has approved new Financial Industry Regulatory Authority rules that prevent mutual fund and hedge fund industry personnel from serving as public arbitrators, effective July 1.

The future of a uniform fiduciary standard regulating the broker-dealer and RIA space is unlikely, according to Barbara Roper, director of investor protection for the Consumer Federation of America.

Regulators are focusing attention on ensuring community banks have proper security systems in place in the wake of a string of cyberattacks on megabanks.

Buyer beware! The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority today issued an investor alert regarding the burgeoning alternative mutual fund asset class.

With the passing of Dodd-Frank, the SEC is paving the the way to adopt a uniform fiduciary standard for broker/dealers and investment advisors. Barry Glassman of Glassman Wealth says that there's no feasible way for brokers to uphold the same fiduciary standard to which RIA are held. He writes, "for them to come under the fiduciary standard as it currently exists, their businesses would have to split up into so many micro pieces that it would be disastrous for them." But the alternative, as it is being proposed, is for the very meaning of the fiduciary standard to change.