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The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) plans to release to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) new guidance on social media usage by broker-dealers and their advisors.  The additional guidance, which is to come within a week or two, won’t “change any of the fundamental principals” in FINRA’s Regulatory Notice 10-06 released in January of 2010, said Joseph Price, senior vice president for advertising regulation/corporate financing at FINRA.

Registered representatives won't have to operate under a fiduciary standard until at least the second half of 2012, and even that might be pushing it, says Richard Ketchum, chief executive of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). For that change to occur, "the SEC would have to move through an implementation phase that would register one or more SROs (self-regulatory organizations)," Ketchum explained. "That process would take a period of time.”

On January 21, the SEC made formal recommendations for brokers and advisors to be held to a uniform fiduciary standard. It also proposed that FINRA be made the SRO for some investment advisors to help improve the regulation of that profession.