Communication Categories Under the FINRA Communications Rule
Chapters in this video
- 0:00 Three buckets: retail, institutional, correspondence
- 1:33 The 25-retail-investor rolling 30-day threshold
- 3:03 Internal communications exclusion
- 3:26 Institutional investor $50 million individual rule
- 4:19 Retail investor contamination of institutional messages
- 4:53 Public appearances and the scripted seminar trap
- 5:49 Three-step classification decision tree
- 6:26 Rapid-fire exam recap
What this video covers
- How the 25-retail-investor threshold works, and why it is measured over any rolling 30 calendar-day period (not per message)
- Why internal communications are excluded entirely from the three written categories and never count as correspondence
- Who qualifies as an institutional investor under the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) communications rule, including the $50 million total-assets exception for individuals
- The contagion rule: why a single retail investor receiving an institutional message reclassifies the entire communication as retail
- What counts as a public appearance versus a retail communication, and the scripted-versus-unscripted distinction that triggers reclassification
- The three disclosure requirements when recommending a security during a public appearance: reasonable basis, personal financial interest, and material conflicts of interest
- How to apply the three-step decision tree on exam day to classify any written, electronic, or spoken communication correctly
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