PODCAST
How FINRA Is Streamlining Data Requests
Data is at the heart of everything we do at FINRA—from examining firms to detecting suspicious trading to protecting investors. But the process of requesting, gathering, and analyzing data involves significant effort across the board.
So, the question is: How do we work smarter? How do we use technology and collaboration to be more targeted in what we ask for, more efficient in how we use it, and more effective in the oversight we provide?
On this episode, Sam Draddy, Senior Vice President of Surveillance and Market Intelligence, and J. Koutros, Senior Vice President of Member Supervision Operations, Procedures, and Standards, explore how FINRA's approach to data requests is evolving. This effort embodies FINRA Forward, our commitment to continuous improvement, regulatory efficiency, and reducing burden while strengthening investor protection and market integrity.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
FINRA Quarterly Regulatory Policy Agenda
Blog Post: A Progress Update on Rule Modernization
Blog Post: FINRA Forward Initiatives to Support Members, Markets and the Investors They Serve
Blog Post: Vendors, Intelligence Sharing and FINRA’s Mission
Listen and subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Below is a transcript of the episode. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human editors and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
00:00 – 01:11
Margherita Beale: Data is at the heart of everything we do at FINRA, from examining firms to detecting suspicious trading to protecting investors. But the process of requesting, gathering, and analyzing data involves significant effort across the board. So, the question is, how do we work smarter? How do we use technology and collaboration to be more targeted in what we ask for, more efficient in how we use it, and more effective in the oversight we provide?
On this episode, we'll explore how FINRA's approach to data requests is evolving, an effort that embodies FINRA forward, our commitment to continuous improvement, regulatory efficiency, and reducing burden while strengthening investor protection.
Welcome to FINRA Unscripted. I'm your host, Margherita Beale. Here to talk to us today about how FINRA is streamlining data requests while enhancing oversight are Sam Drade, Senior Vice President of Surveillance and Market Intelligence, and J. Koutros, Senior Vice President of Member Supervision Operations, Procedures and Standards. Sam and J., welcome to the podcast.
01:11 – 01:12
J. Koutros: Thank you.
01:12 – 01:13
Sam Draddy: Thank you for having us.
01:13 – 01:27
Margherita Beale: Great. So, I know that you've both been on the podcast before, but for those listeners that may not be familiar with you, could you each give us a brief introduction and a bit about what you do at FINRA?
01:27 – 02:32
Sam Draddy: Good afternoon. Thank you, Margherita, for the introduction. And as you noted, I'm the Senior Vice President overseeing the Market Abuse Unit in FINRA's Surveillance and Market Intelligence Unit. My teams are charged with the responsibility of conducting surveillance for the entire U.S. marketplace in equities, options, and fixed income securities. And we perform this work on behalf of the U.S. exchanges as well as on behalf of FINRA. The specific teams in market abuse are the Insider Trading Team, Fraud Detection, Capital Raising Fraud, Reg M Rule 105, the account takeover team, and the manipulation teams, which look at layering, spoofing, match and wash trading, marking, and gaming. Collectively, these teams essentially cover nearly the entire waterfront of surveillance for the U.S. markets.
And in terms of my background, I've been with FINRA for nearly 20 years. I actually started off my career as a registered broker for PaineWebber many years ago, then became a criminal prosecutor in Baltimore. And after that, I worked in the Division of Enforcement at the SEC for seven years before coming to FINRA.
02:32 – 03:17
J. Koutros: I'm J. Koutros, Senior Vice President of Member Supervision's Operations, Procedures, and Standards. Member Supervision is the part of our organization that has our regulatory programs that consist of examinations, risk monitoring, our national cause of fraud detection programs, as well as our MAP, or Membership Application Program. My team sits in the middle across each of those programs, helping support them become more efficient and effective.
I've been with FINRA approximately 20 years, all within Member Supervision, was within Risk Monitoring and some other operational groups prior to leading this current team. And prior to FINRA, I spent about 15 years in the industry at multiple member firms, in control groups, as well as regulatory.
03:17 – 03:30
Margherita Beale: Fantastic. Thank you both. So, let's start with the big picture. Why are data requests such an important part of FINRA's work and what kind of data does your work involve? J., why don't we start with you?
03:30 – 04:49
J. Koutros: So, data is really the cornerstone and foundation of a lot of what we do at FINRA. The data helps us make really informed decisions for our various functions that we've discussed previously. It allows us to understand what firms do for a living, what products firms sell or interact with, as well as what services they provide. All of that information helps lead us to determine risks that are associated with all that data that we're receiving on firms. It also allows us to determine complexity as well as potential themes that we're seeing within the industry. I would also say that it allows us to ensure where there's compliance to FINRA rules as well as SEC rules data assist us to ensure that we're monitoring that. And lastly, I would say that FINRA recently discussed a annual risk assessment process that we do with member firms. That data allows us to really take an effective and efficient approach to inherent risk when we're determining that across peer firms. And it also allows us to get to a residual risk model, which helps inform what we do throughout the year, whether it's our examination plan, what we focus on in examination, or how we handle investigations. All those things come into play and it's all really driven by data.
04:40 – 05:44
Sam Draddy: For my areas in surveillance, data is at the core of everything. We do, as J. said from his side as well. We leverage data in developing and enhancing surveillance patterns and in conducting all aspects of our investigations. In fact, data provides the foundational DNA for uncovering suspicious, fraudulent, and manipulative trading, and really helps us identify the bad actors behind the trading.
And to answer the additional question about why our listeners should care about FINRA gathering data, whether it be our member firms or investors in the marketplace, the fact is that everyone has a common goal to ensure that the U.S. markets are the most transparent and safest markets in the world. And the data we receive from our member firms provides us [with] the means and the capacity to make that goal a reality. So, I'm actually really proud to say that FINRA plays a significant role in protecting investors and our markets largely through the use of our data in our surveillance, investigations and analytics.
05:44 – 05:58
Margherita Beale: Thank you both. So, to continue with this big picture, when we talk about streamlining data requests, how does that conversation fit into our broader FINRA Forward initiative?
05:58 – 07:33
J. Koutros: What I would start off by saying is that even prior to FINRA Forward, we always thought about how can we make our programs better? How do we make our programs more efficient and effective? And data was always at the center of, how do we get better? With FINRA Forward, I think it's just accelerated how we're really thinking about it. And it's given us another avenue of obtaining feedback from other groups on how can we get more effective. So what I would say is we're acting a lot more on feedback that we hear from our member firms, from our peers and other regulators that we deal with. We want to use technology to continue to make us smarter, more efficient. We're looking to use data and streamlining data across departmental usage. So, you'll hear a little bit more about that as we get into the conversation a little bit further. But ultimately, it's really to work with reducing the burden of compliance to our membership. It's the concept of becoming a more regulatory, effective and efficient regulator. And it's the continuous improvement mindset. So, all those things are really related to FINRA forward. And I think ultimately, as Sam had indicated, all this does not interfere with our goal of protecting investors and making our markets efficient and ensuring there's market integrity throughout. So I think our goal is to make ourselves a better self-regulatory organization to make ourselves more of a partner with the industry.
07:33 – 08:06
Sam Draddy: As J. notes, this does have a lot to do with FINRA Forward, but it's also really kind of just the right way to carry out our regulatory obligations. So as an organization, we should always be looking at ways to enhance our technological capabilities and improve how we conduct data analytics and in the process just work better, smarter, and more collaboratively with our member firms. So, if we can leverage technology and data to work more efficiently, as J. noted, and that in turn reduces the number of requests we make to member firms, then we're really delivering on our FINRA forward policies while also becoming better regulators.
08:06 – 08:21
Margherita Beale: J., you mentioned feedback. What feedback did you receive from firms that led you to think about your approach to data requests? And how has evolving technology enabled you to respond to that feedback?
08:21 – 10:06
J. Koutros: As luck would have it, our membership was never shy about providing FINRA with feedback. And it's not just recent feedback. We've been receiving feedback regarding data requests for some time. It's obviously large interactions that we have with member firms revolve around data and the collection of data. So we've been receiving feedback for some time. So there are some initiatives that we've heard, whether it's through an examination or just at a committee meeting, or if we receive feedback to some of our regulatory notices.
All these items are taken into account and thought through. Even going back a few years where there was discussion over the data that we collected of the insight, is it really the most effective and efficient way? And we did a retrospective look and then we just continued collecting that data because we acknowledged where it was back in ‘23 and then continues to evolve. We're doing some work around 8210, some feedback that we received around FINRA rule 8210. So, we're thinking about how we approach those things.
Lastly, the topic that we'll talk about a lot that we receive around blotter. We've been requesting blotter data for some time. And I would say that it's a topic that the industry is very passionate about. And we've received a lot of feedback around the effectiveness of blotters. I think what has evolved over time is how much data we get on a regular basis and how we can leverage that data to make our requests of blotter more specific and precise.
So, I think the evolution of the data that we collect on a regular basis from firms, which is more structured and allows us to use it a little bit more, as well as the feedback has really inspired us to really think about the blotter and how can it get better.
10:06 – 12:10
Sam Draddy: Yeah, the main feedback my teams have received from member firms is not necessarily the number of requests we've been sending, although we have reduced that significantly, but on how we can work more collaboratively on certain issues. So with respect to collaboration on data requests, my areas have traditionally sent thousands of 8210 requests each year to firms to obtain data such as blue sheets, as well as requests for account statements, trade blotters, and other account information. And 8210 requests are pretty much, by their nature, formal requests for information that carry a potential penalizing component to them if firms either delay their responses or don't respond at all. So, we've made a conscious decision to send fewer and less formal requests for data and information without the 8210 imperatives. We've also targeted our requests with respect to the information we are asking for so that firms are not unnecessarily producing data and materials that are not relevant to our investigations.
And then what we found as a result is that firms are extremely appreciative of the less formalistic nature of these requests while they are still being highly responsive to these formal, more targeted requests. And then to answer the question about technology, it's absolutely played a significant role in our ability to send fewer and more targeted requests for data and other information from firms. We've absolutely enhanced our analytics capabilities through a variety of cutting-edge tools, applications and dashboards, working with our technology and our data analytics team known as TAMDA. And many of these applications are leveraging GenAI and natural language processing. And these enhancements to our analytics capabilities have given us the ability to spotlight suspicious trading activity on the front end of our investigations, leveraging the data we have in the house at FINRA that we traditionally would have had to obtain through external requests from our member firms.
So, while we always will have the need to obtain certain types of information from firms, specifically about accounts housed at the firms, our technological enhancements have significantly reduced our traditional need to obtain certain data and other information from our member firms.
12:10 – 12:23
Margherita Beale: So, before we get into the specifics about what each of your departments has done in this area, what about cross-departmental coordination? You mentioned that briefly, J., how has that evolved?
12:23 – 13:34
J. Koutros: Yeah, so I think similar to what Sam was saying, where collecting data upfront, whatever means we receive that data, we're now utilizing that before we make any requests. So historically, where firms would have felt we would have gone out in 60 days prior to even announcing an exam, start requesting blotter information, that has gone away. So, firms don't feel like we're already starting exams 60 days before we even announce our exam. So, the only way that was made possible was by obtaining more data from other departments to make our decisions in the blotter process a little bit more effective and not just request a blotter all the data from the firms and where it became very much a burden on the firms to produce that data within 60 days.
We're taking our internal data by using some of our cross-departmental silos that have come down as well as our ability to share that data a little bit more effectively than we had historically done through our enhancements through technology. So, I would think that time savings and that ability to obtain that data has really helped us become a little bit more efficient from a time perspective, and helped reduce the burden on member firm.
13:34 – 14:45
Sam Draddy: Yeah, on the cross-departmental front, know J. and I have been here a little while, so I think we've seen a lot of significant evolution of cross-departmental coordination over the years. And I think the reality was that FINRA had silos that existed among departments in its past. But under the leadership of people like Robert Cook and Greg Ruppert, a lot of those silos have been broken down. But what really drives even more collaboration internally here at FINRA will be the transformation currently taking place across regulatory operations.
The traditional big three departments, exams, surveillance and enforcement are now going to be housed together under a single leadership team and other areas of regulatory operations that historically operated separately in the big three departments, such as analytics teams, investigations teams and operations are going to be merged into single operating units that will work across regulatory operations for everyone. So all of these initiatives will absolutely help cut down on duplication definitely foster significantly more sharing of information and regulatory intelligence and produce a much more unified regulatory operations team. And Greg has used the phrase “One FINRA,” and this will be the true embodiment of that phrase.
14:45 – 14:55
Margherita Beale: So, to get into the specifics, J., can you start by explaining the changes to how exams approach data requests, particularly around the blotter?
14:55 – 17:04
J. Koutros: Historically, we relied on a more qualitative approach to obtaining blotters when we started an exam. I would say approximately 85 to 90% of our exams started with a large blotter request historically. And member firms felt like it was a request that just was a large request that wasn't overly thought out and wasn't overly impactful, just specific to what a firm was doing for its business.
So, we took a long look at that and we developed a consistent data-driven approach from a requesting a blotter from a risk base. So we built a model based on some data as well as some factors that we had previously on exam. And the only way we were able to do that is based on historical lookbacks. That was historical lookback as to what we requested, historical lookback to what the results of what we requested and how that impacted an examination or a scope of an examination. By taking all that data and doing an analysis of where we had effectively utilized the blotter or where the blotter effectively helped us with our decisions, we weighted that strongly into our new model. And with that new model, we were able to reduce a blotter request by 50% right off the start of every exam. So, our exam requests of blotter have reduced 50% since we've implemented this new process.
On top of that, we're even asking if you are going to request a blotter to be more thoughtful about what you're asking for. So we've also seen a reduction of the 50% that we're getting where they're becoming more precise, whether it's a product specific on the request or a shorter timeframe. I think these things have made our program a little bit more efficient. It's allowed us to really lean into our risk-based approach, but it's also allowed us to be consistent so that when we're reviewing why we're doing things or how we're doing things, we have a history behind what made us make the decision, and it's providing a tool so that we can be consistent. So the member firms and the regulators that will review our work can understand how our decision-making is being done.
17:04 – 18:57
Sam Draddy: On my side, being in the business of surveillance is always a situation where you have to be one step ahead of the bad actors you're trying to catch. And we obviously have an incredibly sophisticated marketplace in the U.S. where we're not only surveilling highly complex trading strategies and algorithmic trading, but we're also now looking at trading that's based on the use of artificial intelligence. Plus, we're seeing bad actors who are trying to influence retail investors into manipulation schemes. And they're leveraging hundreds of different social media platforms that are using deep fakes and chat bots to lure investors into these schemes.
So, I can tell you, Margherita, that I'm confident that we're actually winning this arms race. We're also creating a dynamic surveillance platform with our surveillance optimization and innovation team and our technology teams. That's going to allow for enhancement adjustments to our patterns in real time so that we can adjust the patterns daily, weekly or monthly to monitor the constant shifts in the market landscape, as well as to adjust to specific market events such as the meme stock phenomenon or the recent foreign-based small cap manipulation schemes that have infiltrated some of our listed markets.
Then with respect to our investigations, we work daily with our TAMDA team in creating tools, apps, dashboards, which can spotlight suspicious trading infinitely faster than many of the less automated processes we used previously. And these tools and apps are specifically programmed to identify unusual trading by specific violation type. And that includes from insider trading to pump and dump activity to front running, spoofing, layering, match, marking, or wash trading. And all of these technology enhancements are expediting our investigations much more quickly targeting the fraudulent trading while also reducing the number of requests we have to make to member firms and really keeping us three steps ahead of the bad actors in the marketplace.
18:57 – 19:08
Margherita Beale: So, Sam, to continue on that topic, can you walk us through a practical example of how technology has changed your approach to investigations?
19:08 – 19:59
Sam Draddy: Sure. So technology has really been an absolute game changer in terms of the speed and the quality of our surveillance and investigations. As I noted earlier, we're now integrating Gen. AI, natural language processing, and even graphing technology into our surveillance and investigations, which have all been essential in expediting our investigative processes, while also assisting us in covering suspicious or unlawful traits in a much more targeted way. So, investigations that historically may have taken up to six to eight months are now being completed in less than half that time, with many being completed in a matter of days and weeks as opposed to months. And so, there'll always be a human component to what we do. And we have a tremendous staff of experienced analysts with significant expertise, but we also have fully integrated technology into every aspect of the analyst jobs to make us better, faster, and smarter regulators.
19:59 – 20:13
Margherita Beale: Fantastic. So J., to go back to you, can you talk a bit about Written Supervisory Procedures? You alluded to this earlier, but I understand there's been a change in how we handle those internally.
20:13 – 23:00
J. Koutros: Yeah, so this is a little bit of a more forward thinking of where we are with Written Supervisory Procedures, or WSPs. WSPs often are one of the first items requested on anything that we're doing, whether it's an examination, enforcement matter, an investigation, WSPs are often requested.
Historically, WSPs have been requested matter by matter, investigation by investigation. We even request WSPs when a new member comes in. The first thing that we're requesting is their WSPs, written supervisor procedures. So, as you can tell, just by the brief conversation, we're constantly asking for WSPs. And an area where we definitely think that we can improve in is sharing those WSPs across FINRA, not just our regulatory programs, but with our advertising regulation department, and many other departments that request WSPs, we're looking to create a library of WSPs so that prior to doing a request for WSPs, an examiner, investigator, or anybody at FINRA that's requesting that WSP can take a look back and see what we already have on a member firm. And then just either request if there's been any updates to those WSPs or if there's a specific area that we may not have a WSP on to request that more specific information.
So, we're hoping that over the next few cycles of whether it's an exam or other interaction you have with the firm that the WSP start coming in and we start maintaining them in this library that is accessible. And we're hoping that will help reduce the burden to the member firms as another request, another way of moving Finner forward and creating a new technology which allows us to store these and then utilize them from a searching feature, which is something that we haven't had historically.
So, I think all these things are technology moving forward, thinking through the feedback and where we also have our internal discussions over where can we improve. And hopefully you'll see that just going back to the cross departmental. If there is a exam or an investigation, then there results into a formal conversation that we're not requesting the same blotter data over more in depth or we're not requesting the same WSP that you just provided on another matter investigation. So all these things are related and we're really looking forward to utilizing AI to help us in the review of the WSPs and, quoting Greg, that “One FINRA” approach that moving forward as one unified organization and have the firms or the members feel the same way.
23:00 – 23:10
Margherita Beale: As these changes and evolutions and processes are happening, how do you ensure that you're still maintaining strong oversight?
23:10 – 24:30
J. Koutros: I think at no point are we really diminishing or reducing our oversight. I think we're just moving as forward as the technology is moving us, becoming a little bit more efficient and in turn becoming more effective. We're still focused on risk. We're still focusing on identifying what we find is risk and how can we examine it? How can we investigate these things? And I think historically we did this through large data requests and the large data requests were filter through and we did a lot of work from an experience perspective and trying to identify where there was risk. I think now we're just using the technology to help us. And the reality is that as the technology advances, we become more effective and efficient.
So at no point are we reducing our work from a regulatory perspective. And in many ways, we're probably enhancing our reach because now that we've become more effective or efficient, we're able to focus on risk a little bit more, not just some of our compliance-based reviews or just some of our component work, whether it's on the exam. We're allowing ourselves to become more efficient, which will allow us to reduce the duration of time of exams and allow us to do a broader reach of understanding where there's risk in examining for that.
24:30 – 25:52
Sam Draddy: Yeah, to answer the question on my side, any enhancements or advancements in technology that we're applying in our surveillance and investigations are done in a very surgical way. So, there's absolutely no disruption in how we regulate every day. In fact, almost all these enhancements are built in a secure parallel environment that is thoroughly tested by both our technology partners and by our team of analysts before they go into production. Because when you're in the business of surveillance, the only thing that is constant is change. And we have an incredible amount of support from our trading markets and data analytics team, our technology partners, our surveillance optimization and innovation team, as well as from our operations team. And collectively, we all maintain a continuous mindset of thinking how we can keep the program on the cutting edge while also maintaining our incredible success rate of identifying and uncovering suspicious and illicit trading in our marketplace.
25:25 – 25:30
Margherita Beale: So how are member firms responding to these changes?
25:30 – 26:18
J. Koutros: I think we've received some great feedback on the blotter. So that was one of the biggest pain points and one of the driving factors of a lot of the work that we've done with data. And as I said, the reduction of the 50% on the blotter requests has resulted in a more efficient, effective program. So, I think even when we're requesting the blotter, we've heard some positive feedback. You've heard us, the requests make a lot more sense. They're targeted and they seem to be more in line.
The other thing is that we're hearing some good feedback as well on how we're focusing our examinations, what we're focusing in on, whether it's the initial examination of a firm or just any exam of a firm. We're hearing some positive feedback as to the focus of our exam is really aligned with what the firm does for a living. So, we've heard that anecdotally.
26:18 – 27:38
Sam Draddy: To answer your question, Margherita, I first want to talk about statistics because that relates directly to how our member firms are responding. And my world is all about statistics. So, from an organizational standpoint, we've seen a 12% decline in requests sent out by all of FINRA to our member firms in just the past year. The blue sheet request numbers have dropped even more from approximately 273,000 in 2022 to 80,000 in 2025. And that's a 70% drop in blue sheet requests in the last three years. And I anticipate that trend to continue.
We're also, similar to what J. said, moving to a much more risk-based approach. And we're focusing our investigative efforts on servicing suspicious trading as quickly as possible before any requests are sent out to firms. And oftentimes, we're potentially eliminating the need to even send a request or certainly reducing the number, size, and scope of the requests that we do send.
And the response to the firms has been overwhelmingly appreciative. Basically, what I've heard from their compliance, surveillance, and investigation teams is that spending less time on responding to FINRA requests has allowed them to allocate resources to fulfilling their other responsibilities, which includes supervising the trading at their respective firms and ensuring that their brokers and customers are complying with FINRA rules, firm rules, and the federal securities laws. So, it's basically a win-win for everybody.
27:38 – 27:43
Margherita Beale: J., are there any statistics and results that you can share on your end?
27:43 – 28:17
J. Koutros: Yeah, so I think I referred to it little earlier, but when we do request blotters, now the blotter requests are becoming a little bit more related to the risk reviews that we've already scoped in. And it's more precise. We've seen a 45% more focused on either the specific timeframe or the product type that we're looking at. So the requests have really, from a data perspective and a blotter request for our examinations have really, really been reduced and more focused to identify risk.
28:17 – 28:31
Margherita Beale: So, as you've both mentioned, this is of course an ongoing effort as we continuously improve. But what is next in terms of continuing to refine and improve these processes?
28:31 – 30:03
J. Koutros: We have been working on a program that we've discussed with the industry called exam modernization. And exam modernization is really taking a look at a more data-driven approach to focusing our examinations. So what have we done? We're using data to identify if a risk exists at a firm or the tolerance of our risk to focus in that risk to do an exam. That's one area where we're doing it. So we do expect to see over the next two years, a lot more focused examinations. I think we're doing a lot more work on our exam planning to help identify what's of interest or themes in the industry and use dials to turn up or turn down what we think is important. And that allows us to be a little bit more further risk-based on our exam plan throughout the year. There are other areas that we're looking to use data and continuing to evolve, whether it's a Membership Application Program, our Risk Monitoring program, some of the data we get on a regular basis, continue enhancing that data. I think we've received data regarding vendors. I think there's been a lot of work that we've done with vendor surveys.
So, we're taking that data that we receive and utilizing that to be more informative as we continue to work through these things. there is a lot of work and a lot of ongoing efforts to continue to enhance all our programs. And as we continue to enhance those programs, just make us more effective. And in turn, we do feel that there will be a reduction of burden on the industry through this work of using the data that we already have.
30:03 – 30:58
Sam Draddy: Yeah, as an organization, I think we constantly have to reinvent how we approach technology and data because the markets are always evolving. On the horizon, our firms and exchanges are going to be trading in tokenized securities and thereafter, they may be trading in a whole slew of different crypto products and digital assets. In fact, some firms and exchanges are already even in the prediction market business. So, the question is, how do we prepare for creating new surveillance patterns to monitor trading in these products? And what data sets are we going to leverage, including the blockchain itself?
So, one of the great things about FINRA though is we're always looking to the future. We already have teams in place like the crypto asset team and our blockchain lab that are charting the course for such a future. And then our surveillance department is staying at the forefront of leveraging cutting-edge technology such as GenAI to ensure we are the gold standard in cross market surveillance, not just in the U.S., but really across the entire world.
30:58 – 31:04
Margherita Beale: As we wrap up today, what are the key messages you want listeners to take away from our conversation?
31:04 – 31:49
J. Koutros: I think for me, the key message is FINRA is no different than any member organization or any other organization. We're constantly reflecting on our processes. We're constantly reflecting on the information that we have and how can we leverage that to make us better. And that includes, is there different technology out there that we can utilize that we weren't utilizing five years ago, three years ago, or even one year ago? So, we're constantly evolving.
The message is we're no different and we're constantly looking for ways to make ourselves a better regulator and feedback and providing us honest, constructive feedback of where we can improve is always welcome. And we will continue to welcome that feedback so we can make ourselves a better organization.
31:49 – 33:27
Sam Draddy: In closing, thank you, Margherita. And it's always a pleasure working with J., especially on this podcast. But I know we discussed in detail today about how technology and data are transforming how we conduct surveillance and investigations and the benefits these advances add up to for FINRA, our member firms, the investing public. But in closing the podcast, I also want to highlight how FINRA has also really focused a lot of resources on collaborating and working more closely with our member firms. And I'll give you a specific example.
On the topic of account takeovers and account intrusions, we've been actively communicating and working with member firms who have been victims of these attacks. And if those account intrusions involve manipulative trading across multiple firms, we are seeking to get notifications out to impacted firms through real-time communications as well as through report cards. And then in certain instances, we're even talking to firms and our external partners about potential asset freezes before the illicit proceeds from the manipulative trading schemes are moved out of the impacted accounts. Now data and technology are absolutely interwoven into surveilling for and investigating these account intrusions. And we even have an account intrusion surveillance team housed within our market abuse unit. But a lot of this is really about communication and collaboration directly with our member firms as partners. And I want to emphasize the word partner.
So, moving forward, we plan on working even more closely with the compliance departments and the surveillance and investigative teams of our member firms to really achieve a singular common goal. And that goal is ensuring that the investing American public continues to have the safest and most secure markets in the world.
33:27 – 33:40
Margherita Beale: Well, that's it for today's podcast. Sam and J., thank you so much for joining us and speaking on this important topic. Listeners, if you don't already, please be sure to subscribe to FINRA Unscripted wherever you listen to podcasts. All of the resources mentioned in today's episode will be included on the homepage for the podcast. Today's episode was produced by me, Margherita Beale, and engineered by John Williams. Until next time.
33:56 – 34:30
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