The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority announced Wednesday that Erozan Kurtas has been named senior vice president and head of FINRA's Office of Advanced Data Analytics, a newly created position.
Kurtas, who is currently assistant director of the Securities and Exchange Commission's Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations' Quantitative Analytics Unit, will start his new FINRA post on Feb. 23 and will report to FINRA Chairman and CEO Richard Ketchum and Executive Vice President for Regulatory Operations Susan Axelrod.
Kurtas will have overall responsibility for enhancing FINRA's data analytics capabilities and will work closely with departments across FINRA, in particular the Sales Practice and Risk Oversight and Operational Regulation (ROOR) units.
While at the SEC, Kurtas led the development of the National Exam Analytics Tool (NEAT), a software system that allows SEC examiners to analyze systematically large amounts of trading data to detect insider trading, improper allocation of investment opportunities and other misconduct.
SEC Chairwoman Mary Jo White has said that NEAT allows examiners to access and systematically analyze "massive amounts of trading data from firms in a fraction of the time it has taken in years past."
At FINRA, Kurtas and his team will focus on "improving how FINRA analyzes and uses the data it currently gathers from firms," the self-regulator says, noting that the Office of Advanced Data Analytics "will look for opportunities to more effectively refine that data to make FINRA an even more efficient regulator."
