Finra President and CEO Robert Cook announced a multiyear, top-to-bottom review of itself, calling the self-evaluation program FINRA360.
“Everything is on the table,” Cook said Wednesday in his keynote address to Finra's annual conference in Washington, D.C.
The review includes the possible consolidation of Finra's member and market regulation enforcement units.
“On [my] listening tour, I heard that stakeholders can experience these units as two different regulators, and internal feedback also identified this structure as a potential area for improvement,” he said as justification for the consideration.
A principle that Cook presented as guiding the review is Finra must remain focused on promoting investor protection and market integrity facilitating vibrant capital markets
Cook said FINRA360 is aimed at finding if the regulator is using data and technology effectively as well as evaluating Finra's organizational and operational regulatory functions and seeing if the agency is using tools and metrics to measure its success appropriately.
Generally, he said he wants to expand Finra's retrospective review of rules.
During his address, he promised to bring more clarity into how Finra makes choices in enforcement proceedings.
He vowed that Finra should be aggressive in dealing with bad actors who he said harm investors and undermine confidence in the brokerage industry.
At the same time, he said the percentage of miscreants in brokerages is “relatively small.”