FINRA Public Communications Categories
FINRA groups communications with the public into three broad categories. Knowing these categories will help you organize the rules related to each.
- • Retail communication—written communications, including electronic communications, that will be distributed or made available to more than 25 retail investors within any 30-calendar-day period. “Retail Investor” is defined as any person other than an institutional investor, regardless of whether the person has an account with the firm.
- • Institutional communication—written communications (including electronic communications) that will be distributed or made available only to institutional investors. This definition does not include internal memos, but firms do need to supervise internal communications.
Note: the definition does not include communications that may eventually fall into the hands of retail investors. A firm is advised to use legends warning clients that the communic