In december 2022, finra disciplined a general securities representative. They fined him $5,000 and suspended him for 10 business days because of a series of posts on his public facebook page. Finra cited the text of some of these posts in its decision. Here’s one example
good afternoon all, i’m extremely pleased to announce our monthly performance for september 2019 . Took 3rd place for an options hedge fund with a monthly return of 2.79%. And with that, we are currently the top performing options strategy hedge fund on the street. Our 2019 ytd return of 35.38% is over 100% higher than the second best performing options fund as we have beat the s&p every year since our 2015 inception!
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Who has your best interests in mind,? We do!” finra found that the representative violated three finra rules because the posts. Made claims about performance without enough facts to evaluate the claims. Were often options-related but didn’t have the appropriate disclosures. Were not reviewed by a firm principal or submitted to finra’s advertising business lead regulation department. How to build a finra-compliant social media presence.
It might all sound overwhelming. But if you have the proper procedures in place, you can help keep your company in line with the finra rules on social media. As you’ve seen, quite a few finra rules and regulations apply to social media channels. The main topics you need to be aware of when planning your social media strategy are.
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Recordkeeping and filing requirements. Approval, supervision, and review requirements. Communications rules. Rules related to testimonials, influencers, and social ads. Rules related to adoption of/linking to third-party content . We covered the highlights earlier in this post. For an in-depth understanding of finra regulations on social media, study regulatory notice.
One of the most important things for your team to understand is the difference between business and personal use of social media. Regulatory notice 11-39 specifically notes.
“a firm’s policies and Calling List Uk procedures must include training and education of its associated persons regarding the differences between business and nonbusiness communications and the measures required to ensure that any business communication made by associated persons is retained,
