The FINRA Trojan Horse

Registered investment advisors might soon have a new regulator. FINRA looks interested. This is not good news.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) is the self-regulatory organization ("SRO") for the broker-dealer ("BD") community. FINRA has 4,768 member firms that employ 645,670 registered representatives ("RRs")--that works out to about an average of 135 RRs per FINRA member.

In 2004, FINRA had 5,191 member firms. In the past five years alone, 423 BDs have vanished from the rolls of the SRO. Some 8.2% of FINRA's firms have apparently gone out of business since the onset of the Great Recession. That's a bad sign for the BD community and certainly hits FINRA in its own pocketbook, as its revenue comes from firms it regulates...

Forbes: The FINRA Trojan Horse