BrokerCheck

What BrokerCheck Is and the Statutory Obligation That Created It

BrokerCheck serves a dual function in the US securities regulatory framework. For investors and the general public, it is the primary instrument for exercising informed due diligence before entrusting assets to a financial professional or firm. For regulators and firms, it is the public-facing window of the Central Registration Depository, converting the industry's internal registration and disclosure infrastructure into a transparent, searchable database accessible to any person with internet access. 

The system reflects a deliberate regulatory policy choice that transparency about the professional histories of those who handle public savings is a prerequisite for effective investor protection, and that market discipline — investors choosing not to do business with professionals who have serious disciplinary histories — complements formal regulatory enforcement as a mechanism for maintaining standards across the industry.

Both brokerage firms and individual registered representatives are required by law to be registered with FINRA before they can conduct securities transactions with or for the investing public. 

BrokerCheck allows any person to verify instantly whether a firm or individual is currently registered, what licences and qualifications they hold, what their employment history has been over the past ten years, and whether they have been the subject of customer disputes, regulatory actions, criminal proceedings, or civil judicial actions that are required to be disclosed as part of the registration process. 

For individuals who are no longer registered, BrokerCheck continues to display their information for ten years after registration terminates, with permanent retention of records in specified circumstances including final regulatory actions, civil injunctions involving investment-related activity, and arbitration awards or civil judgements resulting from sales practice violation allegations.

The Central Registration Depository and Data Sources

The Central Registration Depository, universally abbreviated as CRD, is the foundational database from which BrokerCheck draws its information. 

The CRD was developed jointly by FINRA and the North American Securities Administrators Association and serves as the central online registration and licensing system for the US securities industry, used by FINRA, the SEC, other self-regulatory organisations, state securities regulators, and broker-dealer and investment adviser firms to manage registration, licensing, continuing education, and disclosure obligations. 

FINRA is responsible for operating the CRD programme, which covers the registration records of broker-dealer firms, branch offices, and their associated individuals including their qualification histories, employment histories, and disclosure histories, and also processes form filings, fingerprint submissions, registration-related fees, qualification examinations, and continuing education sessions.

The information that flows into the CRD, and thereby into BrokerCheck, is reported by firms, associated persons, and regulatory authorities through three primary uniform registration forms. 

Form U4, the Uniform Application for Securities Industry Registration or Transfer, is filed when an individual seeks to register as a broker-dealer agent with FINRA or any state jurisdiction, and requires disclosure of the individual's employment history for the preceding ten years in and outside the securities industry, all examination results and registration categories, residential address history, and responses to an extensive disclosure questionnaire covering criminal matters, regulatory actions, civil judicial actions, customer disputes, employment separations for cause, and financial matters including bankruptcies, judgements, and liens. Form U5, the Uniform Termination Notice for Securities Industry Registration, is filed by the employing firm when a registered individual leaves the firm, disclosing the reason for termination and any pending or completed disclosure events at the time of departure. 

Firms are under a continuing obligation to amend Form U5 until final disposition of all reportable matters, even if they occur after the initial submission. Form BD, the Uniform Application for Broker-Dealer Registration, is the firm-level registration form that records ownership structure, lines of business, branch office information, and firm-level disciplinary history.

The governing rule for BrokerCheck disclosure is FINRA Rule 8312, which specifies precisely what information FINRA shall release in response to a public inquiry, what information is withheld from public disclosure, and the procedures for disputing the accuracy of information displayed. 

Rule 8312 provides a three-business-day delay before certain information reported on Form U5 is released through BrokerCheck, allowing firms and individuals a brief window in which to file responding or clarifying information before the disclosure becomes publicly visible.

Content of a BrokerCheck Report for an Individual

A BrokerCheck report for a currently registered individual, or one who has been registered within the preceding ten years, contains five substantive sections that together provide a comprehensive picture of the individual's professional history and regulatory record.

The summary section provides a high-level overview of the individual's current registration status, the firm or firms with which they are currently associated, the number of years they have been in the industry, and a count of any disclosure events appearing in the report. This section serves as an immediate alert to users that a more detailed review of the disclosure section may be warranted.

The registration and licensing section details every examination the individual has passed, including the specific examination number, the date passed, and the registration category associated with each qualification. It lists every current and historical registration with FINRA, national securities exchanges, and state jurisdictions, allowing the user to verify that the individual holds the qualifications required for the specific activities they are representing themselves as authorised to perform. 

A broker offering equity trading services should hold a Series 7 licence; an investment adviser representative providing investment advice for compensation should hold a Series 65 or Series 66 licence. BrokerCheck allows verification of these credentials in real time.

The employment history section discloses the individual's employment for the preceding ten years in and outside the securities industry, as reported on the most recently filed Form U4. It provides the name of each employer, the dates of employment, and the individual's job title or function. Gaps in reported employment history can be a signal warranting further inquiry. Currently registered individuals and their firms are required to update this information in the CRD within thirty days of a reportable change.

The disclosure section is the most analytically significant component of the BrokerCheck report and the primary focus of investor due diligence. 

It contains information about customer disputes including complaints, arbitrations, and civil litigations alleging sales practice violations; regulatory actions including formal disciplinary actions, suspensions, bars, and fines imposed by FINRA, the SEC, state regulators, and other regulatory authorities; criminal matters including charges and convictions for felonies and for misdemeanours that are investment-related or involve theft or breach of trust; civil judicial actions including injunctions and findings in civil proceedings involving investment-related conduct; employment terminations for cause; and financial disclosures including bankruptcies, liens, and unsatisfied judgements above specified thresholds. 

Importantly, information about broker-customer disputes must be reported to the CRD regardless of whether the firm or the broker believes the allegations are false, irrelevant, or without merit. 

There is no regulatory review of the merits of a reported dispute before it is recorded in the CRD and disclosed through BrokerCheck, which is why a dispute appearing in the disclosure section does not constitute a finding of wrongdoing.

The individual's most recently submitted comment, if any, is also included in the BrokerCheck report. Registered individuals may submit a written statement providing their perspective on a specific disclosure event, which is published alongside the disclosure in the BrokerCheck report.

Content of a BrokerCheck Report for a Firm

A BrokerCheck report for a brokerage firm contains analogous sections at the firm level. The firm profile section describes when and where the firm was established, its principal office address, and the identities of the individuals and organisations that own controlling shares or directly influence its daily operations as reported on Schedule A of Form BD. 

The firm history section details any mergers, acquisitions, or name changes that have affected the firm, providing investors with the ability to trace a firm's lineage and to understand when a firm operating under a current name represents a continuation of an entity with a prior regulatory history under a different name.

The firm operations section lists the firm's active licences and registrations, the types of business it conducts, the number of registered individuals currently associated with it, and other operational details. BrokerCheck also flags firms designated as taping firms, a designation that applies when a firm employs a significant proportion of registered individuals with prior records of disciplinary action and therefore requires heightened supervisory monitoring of all registered person communications. The disclosure section for a firm contains information about any arbitration awards, disciplinary events, financial matters, and other reportable events in the firm's regulatory history.

Retention Periods and Permanent Disclosures

The standard retention period for a former registered individual's BrokerCheck record is ten years from the date their registration terminates. After ten years, an individual's record is removed from BrokerCheck unless the individual falls into one of a number of categories that trigger permanent retention. Permanent retention applies to individuals who were subject to a civil injunction involving investment-related activity or were found by a civil court to have been involved in a violation of investment-related statutes or regulations, and to individuals who were named as a respondent in an arbitration or civil litigation alleging sales practice violations in which the proceeding resulted in an award or civil judgement against the individual. The permanent retention categories ensure that investors can access information about the most serious regulatory and legal outcomes regardless of how much time has elapsed since the events occurred, and regardless of whether the individual remains active in the securities industry.

Final regulatory actions against former brokers are also retained and made publicly available permanently, reflecting the regulatory determination that the most serious enforcement outcomes should remain accessible to investors and prospective employers indefinitely. This includes FINRA bars, which permanently prohibit the barred individual from associating with any FINRA member firm, and which are among the most severe sanctions available under FINRA's disciplinary framework.

The Expungement Process

Because customer dispute information is reported to the CRD and published on BrokerCheck without any preliminary merits review — meaning a complaint filed by a customer that a firm and broker consider entirely without foundation is reported and displayed alongside complaints that result in awards against the broker — FINRA rules provide a process by which registered individuals can seek the removal of specific customer dispute information from their CRD record through expungement. FINRA has characterised expungement as an extraordinary remedy that arbitrators should recommend only under limited and well-defined circumstances.

Under FINRA Rules 12805 and 13805, as significantly amended effective October 16, 2023, a registered individual seeking expungement of customer dispute information must obtain an arbitration award from a FINRA Dispute Resolution Services panel specifically recommending expungement, based on a finding that one of three narrow grounds is met: the claim, allegation, or information is factually impossible or clearly erroneous; the registered person was not involved in the alleged investment-related sales practice violation, forgery, theft, misappropriation, or conversion of funds; or the claim, allegation, or information is false. Following an arbitration award recommending expungement, the individual must then seek court confirmation of that award before FINRA will remove the information from the CRD system. The requirement for court confirmation is an independent safeguard that prevents expungement from being used to suppress legitimate investor protection information. Statistical data published by FINRA indicates that only approximately four percent of customer dispute disclosures in the CRD during the period from 2015 to 2020 were expunged pursuant to a court order as of May 2021, confirming that the process functions as intended to make expungement genuinely extraordinary.

It is critical to note that winning an arbitration case brought by a customer is not, by itself, grounds for expungement. An arbitration panel must affirmatively find and document one of the three narrow grounds under FINRA Rule 2080 before recommending expungement, regardless of how the underlying customer dispute was resolved.

Firm Obligations: The FINRA Rule 2210 BrokerCheck Link Requirement

FINRA Rule 2210 imposes a specific and operationally significant obligation on FINRA member firms: they must include a readily apparent reference to and link to BrokerCheck on the homepage of any website they maintain and on any page of that website that contains a professional profile of a registered representative who conducts business with retail investors. The rule is designed to ensure that retail investors who visit a firm's website encounter the BrokerCheck tool without needing to search for it independently, removing friction from the due diligence process. Compliance with Rule 2210's BrokerCheck link requirement is verified during FINRA examinations, and the absence of the required link is treated as a regulatory violation. FINRA provides optional tools including a BrokerCheck widget that can be embedded directly in a firm's website to satisfy the rule's requirements. Additionally, under FINRA Rule 3110(e), broker-dealer firms are required to investigate the background of new hires who will be registered with FINRA as part of their supervisory obligations, and checking BrokerCheck as part of the pre-employment background review process is a standard component of this obligation.

Firms and registered individuals are required to update their CRD information within thirty days of a reportable change. Late or incomplete filings trigger automatic daily fines, and repeated or wilful failures to make required disclosures can escalate into suspension or bar proceedings. The accuracy of BrokerCheck as an investor protection tool depends entirely on the completeness and timeliness of the underlying CRD filings, making timely disclosure both a regulatory obligation and a fundamental component of the system's integrity.

Examination Relevance and Key Takeaways

BrokerCheck is tested on the SIE, Series 7, and Series 65 examinations in the context of investor protection, the regulatory framework governing broker-dealer registration, the CRD system, disclosure obligations, and the public availability of disciplinary history. Candidates must understand the source of BrokerCheck data in the CRD and the Investment Adviser Public Disclosure database, the types of information disclosed through BrokerCheck including customer disputes, regulatory actions, criminal matters, and employment history, the retention periods applicable to former registrants, the FINRA Rule 2210 requirement for a BrokerCheck link on firm websites, and the expungement process and the narrow grounds under which it is available.

The key points to retain are these: BrokerCheck is the free public investor protection tool administered by FINRA under Section 15A(i) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, drawing its data from the Central Registration Depository and the SEC's Investment Adviser Public Disclosure database; it provides information about the registration status, licence history, ten-year employment history, and disclosure events of registered broker-dealer agents and firms; customer disputes are reported to and displayed on BrokerCheck without any merits review and their presence does not constitute a finding of wrongdoing; the standard retention period for former registrants is ten years from termination, with permanent retention for individuals subject to civil injunctions, civil court findings, or arbitration awards involving sales practice violations; FINRA Rule 2210 requires broker-dealer firms to display a BrokerCheck link on their website homepage and on any page containing a registered representative's profile; expungement of customer dispute information is an extraordinary remedy available only through FINRA arbitration on three narrow grounds — factual impossibility or clear error, non-involvement, or falsity — with subsequent court confirmation required before removal from the CRD; winning an arbitration case is not itself grounds for expungement; and only approximately four percent of customer dispute disclosures in the CRD during 2015 to 2020 were expunged pursuant to a court order as of May 2021.