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05.21

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FINRA Zooms In on Platform Outages, SARs

This year’s Financial Industry Regulatory tions through other entry points the companies.
Authority exams will focus on broker- if, for example, an app is Also, Pershing
dealer filings of suspicious activity down?” he asked. documents, including
reports (or SARs), technology gover- Regarding communi- confirms, statements,
nance, and communications about cations about digital tax documents and
digital assets, in addition to Regulation assets, St. Louis said notifications, will now
Best Interest, says Bill St. Louis, FINRA’s FINRA will assess be available via Orion’s
senior vice president of retail and capital whether risks are new Client Portal, pro-
markets firms. being adequately viding investors with an
“There’s an intersection between disclosed. If a “at-a-glance view of cus-
cyber events and [anti-money launder- firm has part of todial documents within
ing],” St. Louis explained during a FINRA its digital asset business “being a single app connected to
podcast, Exam and Risk Monitoring facilitated through affiliates that are every aspect of their financial lives,”
Program: Responding to COVID-19 and not member firms, are the communica- the companies said.
Looking Ahead. tions around that clear or is the firm
Account intrusions, takeovers an data perhaps implying that it’s all happening eMoney Advisor Updates API Strategy
breaches “likely will be SAR reportable. at a FINRA-registered and regulated firm, Fidelity Investments’ eMoney Advisor
So, I just wanted to remind firms of that. when in fact it’s not?” he asked. software business has updated its API
And that’s something that we pay quite a strategy, saying it has continued work
bit of attention to,” he said. Pershing, Orion Deepen Integrations to transition from credential-based data
St. Louis highlighted two other priori- BNY Mellon’s Pershing and Orion aggregation (“screen scraping”) to API-
ties set out in FINRA’s 2021 exam priori- Advisor Solutions have expanded their based data aggregation. eMoney suc-
ties report — tech governance and com- relationship via a series of technology cessfully transitioned seven of its largest
munications about digital assets. integration updates. volume connections to APIs by the end
A number of firms, he said, have had The new integrations will enable of 2020, and more than 60% of all
“platform outages in 2020, some of advisors to easily navigate between screen-scraped accounts on the eMoney
which related to market volatility. And NetX360, Pershing’s professional work- platform were migrated and connected
the headline on outages, and like a lot station, and the Orion platform, and through direct access via API, it said.
of things on tech governance, is testing, provide access to real-time data and The company also partnered with
testing, testing, capacity testing, vendor documents, the companies said in a joint Akoya, a financial data access network
management, ongoing maintenance and announcement in April. connecting financial institutions and
testing of changes, new patches, scripts, “The expanded relationship will deliver data recipients. eMoney is the first
new software, new hardware.” advisors even more flexibility, deeper data aggregator to join the Akoya Data
Testing, he continued, “to see whether insights, and more choice, helping them Access Network, the companies said.
or not the linkages between systems are realize new efficiencies, drive business With access to Akoya, eMoney plans
going to operate as expected when there growth and significantly enhance the to create a more streamlined flow of
are patches or changes to one part of advisor-client journey,” they said. data and allow for more stable and
the system.” Additionally, the enhanced application secure connections.
eMoney is planning to go live later this
FINRA, St. Louis said, is “very focused programming interface (API)-level inte- year on the Akoya Data Access Network
gration with Pershing will provide advi-
on customer service” during outages.
Adobe Stock “Can firms handle the incoming calls sors on the Orion platform with access to and eMoney clients will receive addition-
real-time positions, balances and activity
al information closer to launch, it said.
from customers? Are there ways for
—Melanie Waddell and Jeff Berman
customers to access and make transac-
on their clients’ accounts, according to
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