Broker-dealers, RIAs, CTAs, futures introducing brokers, FCMs, CPOs, proprietary trading firms, electronic traders, market makers, and other financial firms exist in a complex and heavily regulated industry. To avoid regulatory pitfalls, these firms must maintain a culture of compliance, starting with filings and internal documents at formation, and continuing through review of marketing materials, approval of client communications, registration of additional traders, advisers, or personnel, ongoing oversight of operations, required annual filings, and amendments to respond to the evolving industry regulations. Regulators have little tolerance for a firm that has failed to keep pace with regulatory changes or failed to update its own compliance documentation to reflect internal changes to the firm’s technology or operational business.
Lawrence Kamin’s regulatory team provides sophisticated and customized regulatory and compliance counsel which is protected by the attorney-client privilege. We have decades of experience shepherding a broad cross-section of the financial service community through the complex regulatory formation and registration process. We regularly design internal systems and internal controls, prepare tailored procedures, codes of ethics, insider trading policies, business continuity plans, privacy notices and procedures, client agreements, proprietary trading agreements, and other documents necessary to help our clients form, register, and operate registered investment advisers, broker-dealers, futures commission merchants, commodity trading advisers, proprietary trading firms, and other registrants, including private equity and hedge fund advisers.
Our representation starts with a legal and compliance consultation so that we can understand how the client’s business actually operates and how the firm’s compliance program and written procedures need to be customized to fit the client’s unique operations. Whether a client is setting up a compliance program for the first time or revising an existing program, we can customize the client’s compliance system so that it aligns with the client’s actual business goals.
The broad experience Lawrence Kamin attorneys possess enables our team to design and implement compliance systems and internal controls that satisfy regulators without unnecessarily complicating the life of the firm’s CCO and CEO. Because compliance procedures only work if the client implements them, we work with our clients to make sure they understand the program, how it fits into the client’s technology and other platforms, and the process for following the program to be in compliance.
To ensure our clients can proactively adjust their procedures as expectations change, our attorneys participate in the organizations that monitor and inform the evolution of the regulatory environment and keep an open line of communication with regulators themselves.