The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) is on its way to posting a record year in terms of the amount of fines that it has assessed to member firms. FINRA’s total fines for 2016 will exceed the 2015 total by 70%, and will also exceed the previous record that was set in 2014, according to Sutherland Asbill & Brennan.

FINRA assessed nearly $80 million in fines during the first half of this year, compared with a total of only $37.5 million for the first half of 2015. Much of this is due to a small number of very large penalties that the regulatory agency has assessed to members as a result of infractions with the use of variable annuities.

See MetLife Securities fined over variable annuity sales.

If FINRA continues at this rate for the rest of 2016, then its total fines would come to nearly $160 million. The Sutherland report states that this would represent almost a 20% increase over the record amount of fines that were levied in 2014.

Interestingly, these fines are part of a slightly smaller number of disciplinary actions that has been taken against regulatory offenders. But there have been a total of 11 fines levied so far in 2016 that have exceeded $1 million, which is nearly twice the number as  last year.

The foregoing information, which is all publicly available, is being provided by The White Law Group.   The White Law Group, LLC is a national securities fraud, securities arbitration, investor protection, and securities regulation/compliance law firm with offices in Chicago, Illinois and Franklin, Tennessee.

For more information on the firm and it’s representation of investors, visit www.whitesecuritieslaw.com.

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