CFP Board, FINRA Consider Rules Feedback

The Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards Inc. is seeking public feedback about proposed changes to its guidelines regarding professional applicants who have expunged criminal convictions.

Under proposed changes to its fitness standards, procedural rules and sanction guidelines, the CFP Board would treat the expungement of a criminal conviction as a potential mitigating factor. Other potential options include giving no effect to the criminal expungement or treating the expunged conviction as though it had not occurred.

If the policy is adopted, someone who has an “absolute bar felony”—a criminal conviction that automatically disqualifies them—could ask the CFP Board to make an exception and to reduce or remove that disqualification.

According to Leo Rydzewski, the CFP Board’s general counsel, the proposed policy is consistent with how the board’s current standards treat absolute-bar-level conduct resolved through pre-trial diversion or deferral of adjudication.

The deadline to submit comments is August 21.

FINRA Gets 24 Recommendations to Revise Investigation Process

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority completed an outside review of its enforcement program, resulting in 24 recommendations made by two outside experts— former SEC Commissioner Troy Paredes and Paul Eckert, a professor at William & Mary Law School.

Major recommendations include a five-year statute of limitations for investigations, with “perhaps incrementally longer periods for … fraudulent or manipulative conduct” and clearer communication regarding FINRA Rule 8210, or information and testimony requests. The report recommends that the Rule 8210 process be centralized, include structural tracking, provide independent reviews of challenges and encourage appropriate corrective steps during the investigation, rather than afterwards.

Brian Rubin, a partner in law firm Evershed Sutherland and co-head of the firm’s securities enforcement practice, who met with Paredes and Eckert last October, says the proposed changes will help firms assist FINRA with investigations.

“In the past, you might get a [Rule] 8210 request letter or phone call out of the blue, and if you ask the staff, ‘What are you looking at?’ the response you often got was, ‘We are doing fact-finding,’ and that’s it,” Rubin says. “[FINRA] staff will speak with the firms before sending out an 8210 request letter, and that gives the firm an opportunity to say … ‘You’re asking for items A, B and C, but that doesn’t really help what you’re looking at. You really want X, Y and Z.’”

The report also suggests that member firms that cooperate with FINRA staff on enforcement matters receive credit, while current rules only credit firms providing “extraordinary” cooperation.

Eckert and Paredes, who were tasked with the report in July 2025, wrote in their report that they held discussions with FINRA’s CEO, head of enforcement, and other agency management and staff. They also met with industry groups and outside legal experts.

Rubin says he anticipates most of the recommendations to be finalized by FINRA.