Start Planning Now for FINRA Renewals

Firms are required to renew the FINRA and state/jurisdiction registrations of their registered reps every year, and the deadlines are coming up fast. Now’s the time to make sure that you have the right framework in place to manage your renewals on time, cost effectively, and efficiently—this year and moving forward.

According to FINRA, “your firm must pay all applicable renewal fees assessed on its Preliminary Statement for the firm, branch offices and associated individuals to ensure continued eligibility to do business in the coming year.”

Have you reviewed your reports of registered persons in advance of the submission window? Are your address changes, name changes and series changes current? Are your licenses up to date? And does your staff have the appropriate registrations? There’s an opportunity to save money if representatives are registered in locations where they no longer do business–make sure you are just paying for the registrations and certifications that you actually need.

The 2021 Renewal Program Calendar can be found on the FINRA website. Firms were able to submit post-dated Forms U5 and BR Closing/Withdrawal as early as October 19 and firms could view, print and pay their Preliminary Statements by logging onto FINRA’s E-Bill beginning on November 16. The Preliminary Statement payment deadline is December 14 and the last day to submit registration filings prior to year end is December 26.

The Financial Services industry is in a time of flux right now. When there’s flux in the system there are a lot of details to stay on top of. Firms need a solution to easily manage inflow and outflow of reps, address updates and product changes now more than ever.

MCO's Authorization, Registrations and Licensing (ARL) solution helps firms manage activity with greater efficiency and visibility:

• Track, submit and maintain registration data across reps, branches, and jurisdictions
• Stop manually managing the flow of data from authorizations, registrations and licensing
• Reduce incomplete or incorrect submissions – and subsequent resubmissions from rejected filings
• Track licenses held and products being sold to insure there are no discrepancies
• Run advanced filters and queries to fill regulatory, internal audit and management requests, including exports to cross reference against FINRA’s Preliminary Statement Notices.

Two-way data synchronization ensures that firm records are reconciled with FINRA. Updates made in the MyComplianceOffice system are automatically filed in FINRA’s Central Registration Depository (CRD), providing proof of submission. Downloaded data from FINRA ensures that information is always up-to-date and matches what regulators have on file – eliminating the need for manual reconciliation. MCO’s ARL solution can connect with HR systems, so you’re entering address change info once, and not rekeying into multiple platforms.

Download our Authorization, Registrations and Licensing brochure.

Reps have to do less administrative work, and the work of the compliance team is streamlined. Both can go about their jobs much more efficiently.

Plus, when you have all of your authorizations, registrations and licensing data at your fingertips, there are more ways to use that information – for example, if you need a list of all of your Series 24 brokers in the state of New York you can easily pull a report.

Want to learn more? Let us know and we’ll set up some time to chat.