At a DOL hearing on a fiduciary rule proposal, SIFMA President and CEO Kenneth E. Bentsen outlined SIFMA's concerns about the proposal and its potentially harmful impact on investors. Mr. Bentsen explained that SIFMA is not concerned about the best-interest standard itself, but about the proposal being far too complex and establishing a myriad of requirements that will be difficult to implement. The proposal, he said, will "result in less education, fewer choices and greater costs to investors, which is not in their best interest." Mr. Bentsen asserted that developing a holistic standard – for

The NFA began implementing Phase 2 of the Section 14 Financial Requirements of the NFA Manual. Phase 2 requires all other depositories to report the end-of-day balances in all accounts that are holding assets used to cover the liability of Forex Dealer Members ("FDMs") to their retail forex customers. The NFA emphasized that it has been working closely with FDMs and their respective depositories that hold such assets to ensure that those depositories have established connectivity with NFA, directly or through the SWIFT network. The NFA stated that Phase 2 will become effective by the close of

MSRB filed changes with the SEC to MSRB Rules A-12 on registration and to A-13 on underwriting and transaction assessments. The MSRB stated that a decrease in the underwriting fee under Rule A-13, coupled with the increase to the initial and annual fees under Rule A-12, effectively will maintain the total fee revenue at approximately the current level. The rule change is effective immediately. The implementation date for the amendments to Rule A-12 (on initial and annual registration fees) is October 1, 2015. The implementation date for the amendments to Rule A-13 (on the underwriting fee and

The SEC announced that an investment management firm agreed to settle charges that include a breach of fiduciary duty, by failing to disclose a $50 million loan received by one of its senior executives from an advisory client. The SEC found that the firm categorized certain investments of an institutional advisory client inadvertently as managed assets when they were not, and charged the client approximately $6.5 million in asset management fees that it did not earn. Additionally, the order stated that the firm's compliance program was not reasonably designed to prevent violations of the

FINRA revised the Registered Options Principal ("Series 4") examination program pursuant to NASD Rule 1022(f). The program requires firms that engage or intend to engage in transactions in options with the public to have at least one Registered Options Principal. FINRA divided the content outline into "six major job functions that are performed by a Registered Options Principal" and included the following specific tasks for each function: Function 1: Supervise the Opening of New Options Accounts; Function 2: Supervise Options Account Activities; Function 3: Supervise General Options Trading