Bari Havlik, a former chief compliance officer at The Charles Schwab Corp., will be joining Finra on Friday as executive vice president, member supervision, Finra said Wednesday.
She will be responsible for leading Finra’s member regulation program, which includes surveillance and examination programs for brokerage firms, Finra said.
Havlik is replacing Finra veteran Susan Axelrod, the former executive vice president of regulatory operations, who will be joining Merrill Lynch Wealth Management as chief regulatory officer in May.
Unlike Axelrod, Havlik will not have responsibility for overseeing Finra’s enforcement function. That function changed last summer when Finra CEO Robert Cook consolidated separate enforcement units and tapped then deputy enforcement chief Susan Schroeder to head the unified department, reporting directly to him.
A 14-year veteran at Schwab, Havlik was responsible for a 400-person compliance program that oversaw Schwab’s broker-dealer activities, investment advisory functions, mutual funds, retirement plans and bank entities, according to her LinkedIn profile.
In Finra’s announcement Wednesday, both Havlik and Cook mentioned the Finra360 initiative, an internal effort to evaluate operations and make regulatory programs more efficient.
One part of the initiative is to make the examination process more effective—something broker-dealers desperately want to see.
Firms have long complained about tedious, nitpicking Finra exams and so-called regulation by enforcement, whereby examiners and enforcers come after member firms for violations that are not specifically spelled out in the rulebook.
In response to member feedback, Finra last December published for the first time a report on its industry-wide examination findings to supplement the individual reports B-Ds receive. The new report is intended to help firms identify potential deficiencies prior to an exam.