Financial Planning (July 6, 2023) - In the latest sign of regulators' ongoing struggle to accommodate financial planners' newfound love for remote work, FINRA is again tweaking its residential office proposal for branch supervisors.
The broker-dealer self-regulator submitted an amendment Wednesday to a previous proposal that would allow supervisors' homes to be designated as "non-branch offices" that are subject to in-house inspections once every three years rather than the current requirement of once a year. Among other things, the latest tweaks add to the criteria that would disqualify a residence from being classified as a non-branch office and would require firms to conduct a risk assessment before allowing less frequent internal inspections of supervisors' home offices.
The amendment is just the latest change to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority's rule for branch supervisors' home offices, also known as residential supervisory locations. FINRA's remote work proposal was first submitted in July 2022.