The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority has completed a project it started about a year ago to consolidate its three separate examination programs—around sales practice, trading, and financial compliance and risk oversight—into a single, unified program.
Bari Havlik, executive vice president of member supervision, one of WealthManagement.com’s Ten to Watch in 2019, was tasked with the project. It was aimed at ensuring consistency, eliminating duplication and creating a single point of accountability for the examination of firms. FINRA oversees 630,000 registered reps and 3,600 firms.
Under the new program, member firms will be grouped by business model, which includes retail, capital markets, carrying and clearing, trading and execution, and diversified types of financial services businesses. Each firm will have a single point of contact and new risk monitoring team, and they will be notified of those in the coming weeks. Exams will be conducted under this new structure next year.
The agency announced the senior leadership that will oversee the new exam functions and report to Havlik. Tom Nelli will lead the teams executing exams, setting standards across firm groups and quality assurance testing; Ornella Bergeron will oversee the single point of contact and risk monitoring teams for the carrying and clearing and diversified groups; Bill St. Louis will lead the single point of contact and risk monitoring teams for the retail and capital markets groups; Tim Thompson will lead the single point of contact and risk monitoring teams for the trading and execution firm group.
In addition, Kerry Gendron, senior vice president of data analytics and technology strategy, will lead a team focused on the strategic adoption of data analytics and technology solutions for member supervision. Ursula Clay, senior vice president and chief of staff, will lead the core functions teams that will provide support across all member supervision groups.