FINRA wants to improve broker history service BrokerCheck

FINRA, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, the largest independent regulator for all securities firms doing business in the United States, is going to expand its free online service, called BrokerCheck – in order to make all information concerning regulatory actions against brokers available to the public. This will be applied to all brokers, irrespective of whether they currently employed or not. Previously broker’s disciplinary history became unavailable to public 2 years after his/her leaving from security industry.

Through BrokerCheck service every person interested in broker’s employment, disciplinary history, etc can easily obtain such information instantly. Today this service contains data about approximately 650,000 brokers. According to FINRA estimation there are 15,000 individuals, who have left security industry after being a subject of a final regulatory action, and their history is not available at BrokerCheck.

Richard Ketchum, FINRA Chairman and CEO, is sure that investors should be able to check whether a financial professional they are dealing with was a subject to any disciplinary actions by regulators. Although information about final regulatory actions against particular individual can be found in different places in Internet, even on FINRA’s own website, the regulator wants to make this information be easily accessible at BrokerCheck. 

FINRA filed its rule proposal to expand BrokerCheck with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) late last week. The SEC will publish a proposal in Federal Register.