PIABA TO TESTIFY BEFORE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL SERVICES ABOUT FINRA AND THE MSRB
“Improvements Are Urgently Needed”: Investor Attorneys Increasingly Concerned That FINRA’s Actions Contradict Its Mission of Investor Protection.
WASHINGTON, DC – MARCH 5, 2026 – Ahead of the hearing before the House Financial Services Committee/Capital Markets Subcommittee titled “The Role of Self-Regulatory Organization in U.S. Markets: Examining FINRA and the MSRB,” the Public Investors Advocate Bar Association (PIABA) released the following statement regarding self-regulatory organizations (SRO).
Michael Bixby, president of PIABA and managing attorney for Bixby Law PLLC, said: “We remain increasingly concerned about SROs’ ability to maintain a positive impact on investor protection without the adoption of additional safeguards, oversight and accountability.
“PIABA believes that improvements need to be made to the SRO structure that would benefit investor protections. PIABA believes that SROs can still be a key component in the regulatory structure but only if they act consistently with their investor protection mandates. FINRA has oftentimes been responsive in the past to concerns raised by PIABA and other investor advocates. However, more recently, FINRA’s actions have contradicted its stated purpose – Investor Protection – and PIABA has become increasingly concerned with recent actions by FINRA that will result in serious harm to investors. In its arbitration forum where the industry already prevails in over 70% of the final arbitration proceedings, FINRA appears to be more interested in granting the industry’s wish lists for industry protection to make the FINRA arbitration forum even more unfair for investors.
“In particular, PIABA’s concerns with FINRA include arbitrary actions that negatively affect investors without notice and comment period, the independence of the FINRA Board, access to justice for investors, and investor protection.”
Full text of PIABA’s testimony is available here.
Since its formation in 1990, PIABA has promoted the interests of the public investor in all securities and commodities arbitration forums, while also advocating for public education regarding investment fraud and industry misconduct. The members of PIABA have collectively represented hundreds of thousands of investors.
Most recently, PIABA has publicly called on FINRA to reject self-serving arbitration reform recommendations from the industry trade group SIFMA, to immediately halt FINRA’s proposed Outside Business rule amendment which will be a disaster to investors and substantially reduce the supervisory requirements that help protect investors against Ponzi schemes and other fraud, to address the multimillion-dollar unpaid arbitration award crisis, and to end its incorrect application of Rule 12407(a),.
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ABOUT PIABA
Public Investors Advocate Bar Association is an international, not-for-profit, voluntary bar association of lawyers who represent claimants in securities and commodities arbitration proceedings and securities litigation. The mission of PIABA is to promote the interests of the public investor in securities and commodities arbitration, by seeking to protect such investors from abuses in the arbitration process, by seeking to make securities arbitration as just and fair as systemically possible and by educating investors concerning their rights. For more information, go to www.piaba.org.
MEDIA CONTACT: Max Karlin at (703) 276-3255, mkarlin@hastingsgroupmedia.com.