FINRA Reviews

Pros

FINRA offers opportunities for people in a broad range of professions - data scientists, compliance examiners, enforcement attorneys, other regulators, investor educators, etc. - to grow and develop within their respective areas while doing very meaningful work: helping to protect investors.
Challenging work that is personally and professionally rewarding. Collegial environment where others are happy to share their expertise to help you learn. Competitive compensation and benefits. FINRA is renewing itself with a comprehensive review of its organization and operations, with an eye toward being the most effective and efficient organization it can be. FINRA is fully committed to a diverse workforce and inclusive work environment, offering a number of programs and benefits along these lines. Senior leadership is actively engaged in advancing diversity and inclusion goals.
Overall, an expectation that you have an opportunity to contribute your individual perspective and expertise to the success of the organization, and your ideas and views will be heard.

Advice to Management

Keep reinventing yourself. Change is of course difficult on many levels, but essential to remaining vibrant, relevant and an attractive choice for people who want to make a positive difference in our markets and economy.

Pros

Work Life Balance, Work From Home Policy, Casual Attire while in office,

Pros

The company offers a lot of training opportunities
Holds town hall meetings to inform employees of the company’s happenings

Pros

interesting work, great co-workers.

Pros

Company Mission. Working with great people.

Pros

None. There are no good reasons to work at FINRA. It is the absolute worst job I have ever had.

Advice to Management

Move into the 21st century. Get some decent technology. Allow some new ideas to permeate the culture. Stop relying on “the mission” to motivate employees. Most people don’t really care about your mission. They just want a challenging work environment with decent pay and opportunities for advancement. If you provide that, people will work hard for you.

Pros

Job security was a plus

Pros

Free water, coffee and tea. Work from home if you're in the right department and your manager allows you, i.e., likes you enough to take advantage of it, otherwise you're out of luck and really should leave; decent benefits (medical, dental and vision and 6% 401k match).

Advice to Management

Trim the fat at the management level. A typical examiner would be reporting to a manager, associate district director, senior director, senior vice president, executive vice president of a department, executive vice president of a larger department, who reports to CEO, who is ultimately reporting to the SEC.

Decision making paralysis throughout as none of the managers actually want to make any decisions placed in front of them. They will point the finger at their subordinates and another department. Job is about saying the ball is in someone else's court.

Management is very inflexible. They can only work as predetermined process no matter how time-consuming and inefficient it is. Some of the working procedures not only increase burden of employees but also make no sense as an organization (such as excessive administrative tasks, lack of use of working technology, or running internet searches on 300+ entities and individuals just to check the box). Also, when issues appear, the team leaders always think first of how to rid themselves from the decision making process (i.e., did the examiner do anything wrong that I can pinpoint them on? Did they send out a request to further extend the deadline so I don't have to make any decisions until later? Did they ask someone else's input on fundamental questions I should also be thinking about? Did the examiner follow the script/template and check the box so there is no room for creativity or thinking outside the box?)

All surveys which ostensibly are set out to address these issues are computer-based. If you do not complete the survey, management sends you an email asking why you didn't complete the so-called anonymous survey. This fools no one.

People keep their heads down waiting to retire (for those with pension pre-merger days with NYSE) or leave very fast (extreme revolving door), using the job just to get their foot in the compliance door and leave as soon as training is over.

Pros

Benefits good
Flexible hours if needed

Advice to Management

Get trained in management because it is bad. Appreciate and encourage people instead of picking on them. Be more active in helping your people or else why are you even needed as a manager if we managed ourselves.

Pros

I worked in the Office of Fraud Detection and Market Intelligence for several years and have spoken with many employees in many departments. Here is my analysis of my time there:
- good place to launch a financial career
- reasonable work hours
- work exposes you to the broker-dealer industry and is a great way to learn
- solid benefits. remote working available after 1 year.

Advice to Management

Clean house starting with the Vice Presidents and the Directors, and take a HARD look at your managers. Listen to the investigators. Pay your investigators more if you demand such high quality and output. It is hard to justify working at a place that pays their essential staff below industry standards, often cuts employee benefits/services for budget reasons, but pays their executives exorbitant salaries.