On January 18, 2018, the Director of the Division of Investment Management, Dalia Blass, issued a Staff Letter to the Investment Company Institute (ICI) and the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) regarding the use of cryptocurrency mutual funds and ETFs. The letter requests comments from both the ICI and SIFMA, as well as the overall industry, on how the industry intends to comply with the Investment Company Act of 1940 (IC Act) requirements.…
Despite a White House administration in place advocating for rollbacks of regulations, both the SEC and FINRA have not slowed the pace of exams or detailing priorities for enforcing regulations already on the books. Further, new areas of concern have regulators scrambling. Founder and President Amy Lynch cites cryptocurrencies as one of them. She explains that the potential impact on markets and harm to retail investors have made cryptocurrencies a new priority for regulators. See …
One of the new priority areas in FINRA’s recently released annual Regulatory and Examination Priorities Letter suggests there will be increased oversight of firms whose reps switch customers from a brokerage account to an investment adviser, fee-based account. Founder and President Amy Lynch, exclusively quoted, believes this signals that firms should do extra surveillance around the timing of transactions to determine whether a switch to a fee-based account disadvantages the customer. Ms. Lynch describes the…
