Arbitration Awards Online
FINRA's Arbitration Awards database enables users to perform Web-based searches for FINRA and historical NASD arbitration awards free of charge, seven days a week. Also available through the site are historical awards for New York Stock Exchange, the American Stock Exchange, the Philadelphia Stock Exchange, and the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board. Users may search for awards by Case Number, Document Text, Date of Award (by date range), Forum, Document Type, or a combination of search parameters. Awards can be viewed online, printed, or downloaded as text-searchable PDF files.
FINRA awards are rendered by independent arbitrators who are chosen by the parties to issue final, binding decisions. FINRA makes available an arbitration forum—pursuant to rules approved by the SEC—but has no part in deciding the award.
Some of the older awards, especially those with poor resolution, may have non-alphabetic characters or typos in the 'extract text' of the search results. This occurs when the document is digitally read during the scanning process and is not reflective of the actual underlying award. Additionally, some older awards are of poor image quality or are incomplete. These awards have been posted to the Arbitration Awards Online database where there is no higher-quality copy available.
FINRA does not necessarily receive notice if an award is later vacated or confirmed by a court. When a copy of the order confirming or vacating an award is provided to FINRA, we will post the document to the Arbitration Awards Online database. FINRA began to post court orders vacating awards in March 2010. In February 2012, FINRA started posting all court orders that it receives relating to arbitration awards (including court orders that deny a motion to vacate). Because FINRA does not automatically receive notice of court orders confirming, modifying or vacating arbitration awards, FINRA encourages parties to perform independent research to determine whether a court has vacated, confirmed, or modified a prospective arbitrator's past awards. Parties are further cautioned that FINRA's Arbitration Awards Online database may not reflect whether a party has appealed an order or the outcome of any such appeal.
To assist with research efforts, the FINRA Arbitration Awards Online database is enhanced to provide a "related documents" hyperlink that is included with the search results for all documents that contain the same case number.
Questions or comments on the Awards Database? Please send us an email.