FINRA has proposed to extend temporary relief allowing firms to conduct their 2022 branch inspections remotely through year-end. If approved by the SEC, the extension of FINRA Rule 3110.17 would extend COVID-related branch office inspection relief that is now scheduled to end on June 30. “The proposed additional six-month extension would provide further clarity to firms on regulatory requirements and account for the time needed for many firms to carefully assess when and how to have their employees safely return to their offices in light of vaccination coverage in the U.S. and transmission levels of the virus, including any emergent […]
Continue readingMore TagTag: Branch Audit Management
Leverage Pre-Audit Questionnaires to Improve Efficiency and Reduce Risk of Non-Compliance
The introduction of RegEd’s Pre-audit questionnaire (PAQ) functionality for Audit Management has enabled compliance and audit professionals to ensure that all pertinent data collected via questionnaires is automatically populated, reducing the need for manual transfer and significantly improving audit cycle time, while reducing the risk of input error. With PAQ’s, auditors and audit schedulers can complete their audit cycle workflows from within a unified tool – schedule audits, designate auditees, assign pre-audit questionnaires, or make changes to distribution recipients from within the solution, for example. With pre-audit questionnaires, compliance programs are able to benefit from: Reduced travel requirements, amount of […]
Continue readingMore TagKey Takeaways: FINRA’s 2019 Report on Examination Findings and Observations
On October 16, 2019, FINRA published its 2019 Report on FINRA Examination Findings and Observations. This report is a useful resource for firms to leverage to improve their compliance and risk management programs. One of the findings in the report pertains to failure to effectively monitor for and react to regulatory changes. Firms are required to review regulatory changes against their supervisory systems, including their written supervisory procedures and training programs. FINRA found that some firms did not adequately respond to recent regulatory changes such as FinCen’s new Customer Due Diligence (CDD) obligations and requirements around Financial Exploitation of Specified […]
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