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By 
May 23, 2024 at 02:28 PM
What You Need to Know
- Some BDs are incorrectly saying their workers will be required to return to the office full time, FINRA says.
- The regulator issued a statement emphasizing that the new rules were intended to create more flexibility while ensuring home offices were subject to inspection.
- Comments by compliance officers about operational challenges created by the rules might have spurred the statement, a compliance pro says.
FINRA’s new Residential Supervisory Location rule and Remote Inspections Pilot Program rule give broker-dealers more flexibility — not less — to allow brokers to work from home, according to FINRA.
Some broker-dealers have been stating the new rules are “stringent” and will require BDs “to bring their workforce back to the office full time,” FINRA said late Wednesday in a statement. “This is incorrect.”
A location from which an associated person “regularly conducts securities business on behalf of a member firm, including a home office, has always been subject to possible disclosure, registration and inspection under FINRA rules and applicable rules of other regulators,” FINRA points out.
COVID-19 prompted FINRA to provide member firms with temporary relief from many of these requirements.
After more than three years of rulemaking, “during which FINRA engaged in substantial outreach to member firms,” the regulator told broker-dealers in January that the temporary relief would end on May 30, a year after the official end of the pandemic.
Member firms “largely expressed strong support for these new rules,” FINRA said.
