FINRA Sets Regulatory Sights on Structured Products
Posted by William Byrnes on January 11, 2012
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) is targeting structured products over concerns about unsuitable sales to retail customers. In an exclusive interview with AdvisorOne (a Summit Business Media product) Bradley Bennett, enforcement chief at FINRA, said that the agency’s caseload on the recent financial crisis has eased up, and the agency is ready to renew its focus on structured products.
Structured products are often marketed to retail customers without an adequate explanation of their associated risks. “They purport to give the alchemy of lowering risk while increasing yield,” Bennett said, “but the risk needs to be explained” both to the broker-dealer’s “sales force and customers, and be suitable given the customer’s financial circumstances.”
Read this complete analysis of the impact at AdvisorFX (sign up for a free trial subscription with full access to all the planning libraries and client presentations if you are not already a subscriber).
For previous coverage of structured products in Advisor’s Journal, see SEC Warns Investors about Principal Protected Notes (CC 11-117).
For in-depth analysis of structured products, see Advisor’s Main Library: 7774. What is a structured product? How are structured products taxed?
This entry was posted on January 11, 2012 at 10:00 and is filed under Wealth Management. Tagged: AdvisorOne, Broker-dealer, Business, Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, FINRA, Investment Advisor, Structured product, Summit Business Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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