Christopher W. Flint, president and CEO of ProEquities Inc. in Birmingham, Ala., was elected to a three-year large-firm seat on the Finra Board of Governors, defeating incumbent Andrew Duff, former chairman and CEO of Piper Jaffray Companies, according to a new release issued by Finra.

Flint joins two other large-firm governors as representatives on the board.

There are 174 large-firm Finra members eligible to vote in the Board of Governors election. Candidates for the seat are required to employ at least 500 persons. However, candidates nominated by the nominating committee are automatically on the ballot, while all other big-firms candidates must qualify to run in the election by submitting a petition with the signatures of at least 10% of those 174 firms, which Flint did.

Flint has more than 23 years of experience in the financial services industry, working in sales technology, compliance, operations and distribution. In addition to serving as president and CEO of ProEquities Inc., Flint is senior vice president, distribution companies, for Protective Life Insurance Co.

Duff currently services on the board of directors of Piper Jaffray & Co., the primary broker-dealer subsidiary for Piper Jaffray Companies. Duff joined Piper Jaffray in 1980.

A Piper Jaffray spokeswoman told Financial Advisor she would forward the magazine’s request for comment to Duff, who did not immediately respond to it.

Flint responded for comment through a spokesman. “Based on the feedback I received during the petition process and throughout the election cycle, I believed that a majority of voting members’ views were consistent with mine,” Flint said. “I think they felt confident in voting for me because they knew they would have fair, objective and accurate representation with me in this Board position.”

Flint said he ran on several key issues, including an end to rulemaking by enforcement. He also said he wanted to help create a level regulatory playing field between the broker-dealer and RIA sectors, while ensuring the protection of investors.

“I want to help to shape the process in such a way that the end result is an increased level of clarity and transparency for both investors and the firms who offer advice and related solutions,” he said.

FSI President & CEO Dale Brown said the group was proud to endorse Flint. ”One of our top goals is to make the value of the independent model to investors better understood by all stakeholders," he added. "Having now helped our third petition candidate secure a Finra Board seat in the last four years, we’re more confident than ever that strong progress is being made toward this goal.”

Voters not only rejected a re-election bid by incumbent governor Duff, a Finra nominee, but also that of small-firms incumbent Robert A. Muh, who was defeated by petition challenger Linde Murphy, a principal and compliance officer at M.E. Allison & Co. of San Antonio.

Murphy joins two other small-firms governors as representatives on the board. Murphy qualified to run in the election by submitting a petition with the required signatures of at least 3% of Finra’s 3,261 small-firm members.

Since the beginning of her investment career in 1999, Murphy has mainly worked for small firms. Her current firm, M.E. Allison & Co. Inc., operates a full-service broker-dealer and RIA founded in 1946. The Texas firm also provides municipalities with advisory and underwriting services.

Muh, with over four decades of experience in the financial services industry, currently serves as CEO of Sutter Securities, a 12-person broker-dealer he co-founded in San Francisco in 1992. He was elected to a three-year term on the Finra Board of Governors in 2016. Muh declined comment.

While not nominated to run for the board, Murphy said in an August 21 telephone interview that if she decides to run for re-election in 2022, when her three-year term is up, it will again be by petition.

“Members should be the ones who choose who will make it to the ballot,” she asserted.

Murphy said she seeks to be a voice for many small firms being strangled by expensive red tape. “I’ve seen so many small firms go out of business due to overwhelming regulations and skyrocketing compliance costs,” she said. “Our expenses have gone up so much and margins shrink because it takes so many more people to do their jobs than it has in the past.”

At the top of her to-do list is advocating for legislative relief from Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) rules.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, as amended, directs the PCAOB to establish, by rule, auditing and related professional practice standards for registered public accounting firms to follow in preparing audit reports for public companies and other issuers, as well as broker-dealers.

“We have got to get small firms relief from the PCAOB,” she said. “I am working alongside other members to get this across the finish line on (Capitol) Hill. The PCAOB was a blanket requirement intended to examine large firms with more complex issues.”

Murphy said that audit costs for small firms have tripled under PCAOB rules, and in some cases have quadrupled since any auditor hired must be PCAOB qualified.

“A lot of small firms have retail clients that are Main Street investors,” she said. “These are the investors that may not have very much to start with, but it's important for them to have guidance, and small firms provide that.”

In addition to Flint and Murphy, there will also be two new public governors on Finra’s board: Camille Busette, director of the Race, Prosperity, and Inclusion Initiative and Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, and Ethiopis Tafara, vice president and general counsel of Legal, Compliance Risk and Sustainability at the International Finance Corporation, which is part of the World Bank Group.

Both Busette and Tafara received the nominating committee’s nominations to be on the ballot.

All four new governors begin three-year terms on Finra’s Board of Governors on Monday.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (Finra), located in Washington, D.C., is a private corporation that acts as a self-regulatory organization dedicated to investor protection and market integrity. A 24-member Board of Governors oversees the not-for-profit organization.