In Regulatory Notice 12-32, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (“FINRA”) says it needs to increase its fees to cover the costs of regulating an increasingly complex industry. It plans to achieve this by raising the fees on a staggered schedule. The fees will become effective on a rolling schedule, as follows.
- Effective July 2, 2012 – FINRA will increase fees associated with its review of advertising materials and corporate financings. The reviews of printed media, video or audio will increase to $125 for the first 10 pages up from $100. In addition, the fee for an expedited review of the first 10 pages will increase to $600 up from $500. The fee for reviewing pages above 10 on an expedited basis will double from $25 per page up to $50 per page.
- Effective July 23, 2012 – FINRA will impose a sharp increase in its fees for new membership application (“NMA”) filings and begin imposing a new continuing membership application (“CMA”) filing fee. For the NMA filing, fees will increase from the current range of $3,000-$5,000 up to $7,500 – $55,000 depending on the size of the new member applicant. For the CMA filings, fees will be imposed for certain changes in a member firm’s ownership, control, or business operations ranging from $7,500 – $100,000.
- Effective January 2, 2013 – FINRA will raise the fees related to its web-based Central Registration Depository (“CRD”) system, which includes rate hikes for initial/transfer registration, disclosure filing, system processing, fingerprint processing, mass transfer registration, and late disclosure and the branch office annual registration and related waiver process.
Firms should proactively notify their licensing and registration personnel and ensure that adequate funds are available before proceeding with the above filings. For additional information about this and any other compliance topic, please contact us at (619) 278-0020 to schedule a consultation.