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The Virtual Assistant - Compliance Statement and Supporting Documents
The VSA was launched
in 1995 and has grown to become "the most comprehensive sales support tool
in the industry." From the beginning, we have taken great care to make
certain all of our material is "in compliance." We have been aided in this
effort by the broker-dealer compliance departments of many of our clients.
However, in order
to be absolutely sure of our position, we hired Financial Regulatory Services (formerly BISYS Regulatory Services)
to have the entire contents of the VSA reviewed and submitted to FINRA (formerly NASD)
in 2004-2005. All FINRA-recommended changes to the content were made
at that time. We subsequently conducted a FINRA "renewal" review
by resubmitting selected portions of the VSA content, as recommended by Financial Regulatory Services, in the summer of 2006. The results for
that review, together with the changes made to the content as a result
of the review, are available below. Further, we have retained Financial Regulatory Services
on an ongoing basis to review and, if appropriate, submit any new material
to FINRA.
1. August
28, 2006 FINRA (formerly NASD) Comment Letter
2. Summary
of VSA Changes Made
We have some producers
who seek approval on an "as used" basis. They simply e-mail presentations
they have prepared for clients to their compliance officers and usually
get same day approval for that individual piece. They provide their compliance
department with a link to this page in advance in order to lend credibility
to the compliance efforts and increase the compliance officer's comfort
level in the overall product.
Alternatively, you may want to send the following to your marketing and compliance offices for consideration:
NEW COMPLIANCE PARAMETERS
- In what we suspect is a common-sense effort to reduce compliance
costs and case flow (and maybe make their registered reps lives a
little easier!), a major and well-respected insurance company and a
large broker-dealer have made a bold step. Here is their new standard
for sales materials:
Producers are no longer required to submit sales materials created and/or published by a third party, as long as:
- There
are no references to (COMPANY) or (BROKER-DEALER), to specific
(COMPANY) or (BROKER-DEALER) products, or to securities products or
services in general.
- The producer had no input regarding the content of the sales materials.
For
example, items exempt from review would include an educational brochure
about the benefits of life insurance produced by an industry trade
group, or a reprint of an article about disability income insurance
that appeared in a trade publication. (Of course, producers must abide
by applicable copyright or distribution restrictions.) However, if
biographical information was added to the brochure or a masthead was
added to the article reprint, the materials would need to be submitted
for review.
This
appears to be a sound policy that offers relief from otherwise
burdensome and time consuming processes. It is beneficial to compliance
personnel and producers alike and we hope other companies and
broker-dealers will soon follow suit.
For additional
insight, please contact our VP Compliance, Joan
Barrett, CLU, ChFC.
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