The Financial Regulatory Authority’s (FINRA) new rules for communications with the public will go into effect on February 4, 2013. Regulatory Notice 12-29 introduces the Communication Rules (FINRA Rules 2210 and 2212 through 2216) which details which existing rules will be replaced and/or adopted, and notes that communication categories will be reorganized from six down to three.

• Institutional communication includes written (including electronic) communications that are distributed or made available only to institutional investors, but does not include a firm’s internal communications.
• Retail communication includes any written (including electronic) communication that is distributed or made available to more than 25 retail investors within any 30 day calendar-day period.
• Correspondence includes any written (including electronic) communication that is distributed or made available to 25 or fewer retail investors with any 30 calendar-day period.

Registered firms should take the steps now to incorporate these new classifications and their individual pre-approval, filing and content standards into compliance programs.

Put the Smarsh Virtual Compliance Officer® to work to help you manage FINRA’s Communications Rules. The proprietary VCO will save your compliance reviewers time and strengthen your review processes. The system enables you to systematically route every email, IM, text, tweet or post through advanced policy filters. Automate the classification of all these message types and apply searchable custom tags (ex. Institutional communication, Retail communication, Correspondence) to support your policies and procedures.

For more information on the changes, download Regulatory Notice 12-29 from FINRA.