PREPARING FOR A FIMBRA INSPECTION

The purpose of this paper is to give readers an overview of a routine Financial Intermediaries, Managers and Brokers Regulatory Association (FIMBRA) compliance visit and to suggest to new members, who have yet to experience such a review, a basic philosophy that might make the pressures of regulation easier to accommodate. Compliance with FIMBRA's rules is as much in the member's interests as it is in the clients' since the record‐keeping that is insisted upon enables advisers to show the reasons for their recommendations and to prove how thoroughly they have explained those recommendations, and any risks of non‐suitability, to those clients. The principal benefactors from observing FIMBRA's rides are thus FIMBRA members.