Regulatory leakage among financial advisors: Evidence from FINRA regulation of “bad” brokers

Abstract

The regulatory framework for financial advisors is fragmented, with multiple state and federal regulators. Prior empirical literature on financial advisors has largely focused on a single subset of financial advisors, but we create a database containing brokers regulated primarily by FINRA, investment advisers regulated by the SEC or state securities regulators, and insurance producers regulated by state insurance regulators. There is significant overlap across the regimes; more than 40% of the advisors in our data are registered with more than one regulator. This overlap has implications for labor allocation and market discipline. For example, of the individuals who exit FINRA’s broker regime, 79% were jointly registered in insurance upon exiting FINRA’s regime. This could be efficient if it reflects bad actors who transition to lower risk work, but our evidence shows that these advisors continue to engage in financial planning after they move to the insurance side, as over 90% maintain licenses to sell annuities. Moreover, those who committed misconduct when regulated by FINRA continue to have heightened levels of misconduct in insurance. Our findings have additional implications for regulatory discipline. In 2018 and 2019, FINRA proposed rules designed to nudge “bad” brokers out of the industry. We show that these proposals caused thousands of high-risk brokers to exit the FINRA broker regime, but that the majority of these individuals did not leave financial services—98% are currently registered with state regulators as insurance producers.