FINRA's hot-button proposal on remote work gains time

Financial advisors love the freedom and autonomy that come from working remotely, a trend that emerged when the pandemic first upended work life in early 2020. But as FINRA, the regulator of brokerages that also tracks independent advisors, toys with making new rules for how remote and home offices should be overseen, it's garnering pushback from corners of the industry.

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The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority is giving industry officials more time to comment on its proposal to subject financial planners' home offices to less frequent internal inspections and normalize other remote-work policies that the regulator adopted early in the COVID-19 pandemic. FINRA separately is pushing ahead with a pilot program that would allow firms to conduct required inspections of their branch offices remotely, rather than in-person.?

The twin proposals come as wealth managers and financial advisors struggle with now-standard questions over how much work is best done in offices and how much can be securely performed at home.?

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