Legal & Compliance

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  FINRA Inks Deal With Direct Edge, Gains Oversight of 90% of Equity Trading Volume

  By Melanie Waddell, AdvisorOne  |  May 22, 2013

  FINRA announced Wednesday that Direct Edge, the third-largest stock exchange operator in the U.S., has made a deal with FINRA to provide market surveillance services on behalf of Direct Edge's two licensed stock exchanges.

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  5 Indie BDs Ordered to Pay $9.6M for Nontraded REIT Violations

  By Melanie Waddell, AdvisorOne  |  May 22, 2013

  Massachusetts Securities Regulator William Galvin ordered five IBDs to pay $8.6 million in restitution to investors and fined them a total of $975,000 for improper sales of nontraded REITs.

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  The CFP Board’s CE Proposal: What’s Driving This Flawed Idea?

  By Michael E. Kitces  |  May 22, 2013

  In the final post in a series, an exploration of what may be behind the CFP Board’s proposal to offer continuing education. Is it looking to compete with other planning associations?

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  William Galvin: The 2013 IA 25 Extended Profile

  By Melanie Waddell, AdvisorOne  |  May 22, 2013

  Since taking on an additional 139 advisors with $6.6 billion in assets under the Dodd-Frank “switch,” Massachusetts has “been able to do what the Securities and Exchange Commission hasn’t.”

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  FINRA’s Ketchum to SEC: Act Now on Fiduciary, or We’ll Make Our Own Disclosure Rules

  By Melanie Waddell, AdvisorOne  |  May 21, 2013

  FINRA CEO Richard Ketchum called on the SEC Tuesday to “act quickly” to put brokers and advisors under a uniform fiduciary standard, but noted that in the absence of SEC action, FINRA “will look hard” at issuing “an additional disclosure rule” for BDs.

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  Inexperienced Plan Sponsors Need a Little Love From Fund Websites

  By Gil Weinreich, AdvisorOne  |  May 21, 2013

  Fund firms managing employee retirement accounts make it needlessly difficult for plan sponsors to fulfill their fiduciary obligations, a new Dalbar study has found.

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  FINRA Fines LPL $9M for Failing to Monitor Emails

  By Melanie Waddell, AdvisorOne  |  May 21, 2013

  FINRA announced Tuesday that it fined LPL for 35 separate, “significant email system failures,” and for making material misstatements to FINRA during its investigation.

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  The CFP Board’s CE Proposal: Real Strategies to Improve Continuing Ed

  By Michael E. Kitces  |  May 21, 2013

  In the second of a three-post series on the CFP Board’s proposal to offer continuing education itself, some modest proposals to really improve CE, along with a warning on how the Board’s proposal is rife with conflicts of interest.

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  The Price of Everything: What’s the Value of Sound Advice?

  By Bob Clark, AdvisorOne  |  May 20, 2013

  The SEC Regulatory Accountability Act is yet another attempt by the securities industry to shift attention away from the consumer protections of requiring brokers to put the interests of their clients ahead of their own, by focusing solely on the “costs” of doing so.

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  Bond Investors Must Prepare for Rate Spike: SEC’s Walter

  By Melanie Waddell, AdvisorOne  |  May 20, 2013

  At the FINRA conference, SEC Commissioner Elisse Walter also said it was time to get to the "nitty-gritty" of a fiduciary rule.