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.
Start by Verifying Contact and License Information
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.”
Is your firm's renewal primary contact information in the FINRA Contact System up-to-date? That's a crucial first step.
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.
Firms can submit post-dated Forms U5 and BR Termination with a December 31 termination date beginning on October 14
Firms can initiate Forms BDW and ADV-W filings with a termination date of December 31 on beginning November 1
Firms can view, print and pay Preliminary Statements by logging onto FINRA’s E-Bill beginning on beginning on November 11. Firms are also reminded to save or print these reports before Final Statements are generated, because Preliminary Statement reports cannot be accessed once the Final Statement is created.
November 27 is the last day firms will be able to request a mass transfer for 2024. There will be a moratorium on mass transfer processing from December 18 through January 2.
Firms should ensure full payment is received and posted to their account by December 9. FINRA-registered firms that fail to do this could be subject to a late fee.
Firms must submit filings before the 2024 deadline at 6 p.m. EST on December 26.
Firms can access Final Statements by logging onto FINRA’s E-Bill beginning on beginning on January 2.
January 24 is the deadline for final payment and for firms to report in writing any discrepancies found on the Final Statement.
The CRD/IARD system shuts down for the year following the 6PM EST deadline on December 26. Firms that missed the payment deadline must ensure that renewal payment is posted by this date. As of 9PM EST, any unpaid Preliminary Statements will result in jurisdictions automatically terminating registrations for failure to renew. In addition, failure to renew will result in the inability to conduct business in these jurisdictions effective January 1, 2025. More information about the FINRA Renewal Program and requirements can be found in the Renewal FAQ.
Manage registration requirements effectively and easily
While some financial services firms are quietly laying off workers and reducing headcounts, a Coalition Greenwich survey found that many broker-dealers are still planning on hiring, especially in the area of electronic trading. When there’s new hires, terminations and other change in the system there are multiple 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. Manual solutions like spreadsheets just can't keep up.
Monitor and maintain license, registration and exam data across reps, branches and jurisdictions
Integrate with internal systems including HR and FINRA’s CRD/IARD to ensure up-to-date notification of changes
Eliminate manual processes, duplicate data entry and the risk of maintaining multiple systems
Run advanced filters and queries to fill regulatory, internal audit and management requests, including exports to cross reference against FINRA’s Preliminary Statement Notices
Allow reps to view their data and complete regular attestations helps ensure data is accurate and up to date
Two-way data synchronization ensures that firm records are reconciled with FINRA. Key updates made in the MyComplianceOfficesystem can be automatically filed in FINRA’s Central Registration Depository (CRD) and Investment Adviser Registration Depository (IARD). 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.
And even if your firm does not have a direct feed to FINRA, our solution provides a framework to capture license and registration data and track changes and expirations. In addition, MCO’s Registrations and Licenses solution can connect with HR and other internal firm systems, so you’re entering address change info once, and not rekeying into multiple platforms.
With MCO's Registrations and Licensing solution, reps can spend less time on administrative functions, 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 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.
Learn more about strategies to efficiently and effectively manage license and registrations data to be prepared for streamlined year-end compliance in our on-demand webinar.
Want to learn more? Let us know and we’ll set up some time to chat.
MCO’s Representative Registrations and Licensing solution is part of MCO's Know Your Employee compliance suite, an integrated solution that manages personal trading, outside business activities, gifts and entertainment, attestations and other areas of employee compliance.
