Rich Ketchum, FINRA chairman and president, told 1200 attendees at the FINRA annual conference in Washington, DC, that FINRA would not be publishing securities licensing grades on BrokerCheck after all. In so doing Ketchum bowed to the strongly negative industry response to FINRA’s proposal to add exam scores to personal reports on BrokerCheck public database. At the May 21 speech, Ketchum said:
“For the next phase, we’re interested in ideas for expanding the range of information we disclose in BrokerCheck, updating the way in which that information is presented, and increasing investor awareness of BrokerCheck. In February, we issued a Notice requesting comment on our proposed changes and received numerous comments. We’ve heard your concerns about whether your test scores will be revealed. I want to stress that that’s not the type of information we’re interested in disclosing.”
Earlier in the month, FINRA announced that it was making other changes to BrokerCheck and Investment Advisor Public Database, per SEC recommendations. These changes that have been implemented include:
-Centralized access to registration on both broker-dealers, registered representatives, investment advisors and investment advisor representatives
-Additional educational content
-Improved searching, including a a zip code search function