FINRA has added a new name to its board of governors.
Wendy Lanton, the chief operations/compliance officer of Lantern Investments, has been elected to a three-year term on the regulatory agency's board, representing small firms. Securities America President Jim Nagengast has also been reelected as a large firm governor, FINRA announced.
Lanton, a founding principal of Lantern in 1993, has served on the FINRA Small Firm Advisory Committee since 2015, including in the role of chairperson in 2018. Lantern Investments is located in Melville, N.Y., with more than $1 billion in brokerage and advisory assets. In an interview with WealthManagement.com, Lanton said she learned of the results on Friday night and should attend her first board meeting in September.
“For more and more small firms, their businesses are either getting reshaped or closing, and costs are going up and revenue is going down,” she said. “If it costs us more money to do compliance or to invest in technology or regulatory fees, all those things impact firms.”
Additionally, Lanton said she understood what it was like for a small firm to deal with lots of regulations and examinations. She acknowledged that many of the issues facing such firms did not pertain to the work of FINRA’s board but said she would work with the other two small firm governors to make sure their concerns were well represented.
“Small firms play a vital role in the investment community,” she said. “We serve a tremendously diverse group of investors, and I fear if small firms were to disappear it would ultimately be harmful to those investors.”
In addition to the three governors representing smaller firms, the 24-member board includes three from large firms, one from a medium-sized firm, one from an independent dealer/insurance affiliate, one investment company affiliate and one floor member, with the rest of the chairs being members of the public. Today also marks the start of Eileen Murray’s tenure as chairperson of the board. Murray was the co-CEO of Bridgewater Associates until this year and has sat on FINRA's board since 2016.
FINRA CEO Robert Cook congratulated Lanton and Nagengast on their elections.
“We look forward to working with Wendy and continuing to work alongside Jim in support of FINRA’s mission of protecting investors and ensuring integrity of the markets,” he said.
Nagengast has been a member of FINRA’s board since 2018, and currently serves on both the Finance, Operations and Technology Committee, and its Regulatory Operations Oversight Committee. Governors can serve only two consecutive terms on the board, which holds five regularly scheduled meetings per year.