After issuing a request for information on complex products that drew widespread criticism from the investment industry, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority will consider the comments carefully before making any changes to regulation, the group's CEO says.
"Our minds are not made up about this," FINRA CEO Robert Cook told ThinkAdvisor on Monday at the regulator's annual conference in Washington.
FINRA took comments until May 9 on which products should be classified as "complex."
"It's an important topic," Cook said. "We've received a lot of comments and we're going to go through them very carefully and think about whether any further action is appropriate — and what that would look like."
RIA founder turned crypto evangelist Ric Edelman told FINRA in his comment letter that FINRA's ideas are "fatally flawed" and "completely unworkable."
As set out in Regulatory Notice 22-08, FINRA could limit retail investor access to many mutual funds, ETFs and closed-end funds, according to Dave Nadig, financial futurist at ETF Trends.
