Starting Monday, November 11, 2019, a registered investment adviser firm can access, via its IARD account, its Preliminary Renewal Statement for 2020 renewals. The Preliminary Renewal Statement must be paid, in full, by Monday, December 16, 2019. Depending on your method of payment, it may take at least two days for a payment to post to the IARD account. Because of this, your firm’s payment should arrive at FINRA no later than Wednesday, December 11, 2019, to ensure that funds are posted to your firm’s IARD account by December 16, 2019.
Failure to maintain active registration or failure to properly renew registration by the deadline may be detrimental to an investment adviser firm. Investment adviser firms and investment adviser representatives that are not properly renewed may become ineligible to conduct business effective January 1, 2020. Additionally, certain regulators may assess fines against those firms or representatives that fail to properly renew.
Most jurisdictions participate in the IARD Automatic Failure to Renew Program. If your investment adviser firm or its representatives are registered or notice filed in a jurisdiction that participates in the IARD Automatic Failure to Renew Program, your jurisdiction has authorized FINRA to automatically terminate your investment adviser firm and investment adviser representative registrations on December 31, 2019, if your investment adviser firm’s IARD Renewal Account is not funded by the renewal deadline.
Unfortunately, every year there are investment adviser firms that fail to submit renewal fees through their IARD accounts in a timely fashion, and almost all state securities regulators will automatically terminate these registered investment adviser firms and their investment adviser representatives for failing to pay their renewal fees. Contacting each state securities regulator after such a failure to renew can be time intensive and potentially expensive since a state securities regulator typically has the authority to require a new registration application and prohibit the charging of investment advisory fees as long as the investment adviser and its representatives are unregistered.
To help avoid problems with your investment adviser’s annual renewals, RIA Compliance Consultants recommends that you utilize our IARD Renewal Program and ADV Annual Amendment Service. For only $1,095*, investment advisers that engage us by executing the engagement and remitting the retainer fee prior to December 19, 2019, will receive assistance with the annual renewal process and with preparing and submitting the Form ADV Part 1 Annual Amendment that all investment advisers are required to file and submit within 90 days following the investment adviser’s fiscal year. If you are not currently in one of our annual compliance programs or have not already purchased our 2020 IARD Renewal Program and Form ADV Annual Amendment Service, we recommend that you do so as soon as possible since renewal statements become available next week. Engagement of RCC after December 19, 2019 will be subject to availability and additional fees will be charged.
Additionally, if you are an SEC registered investment adviser firm with retail clients, RIA Compliance Consultants will be offering an investment adviser Client Relationship Summary/Form ADV Part 3 (“Form ADV Part 3”) drafting service for $595 subject to certain restrictions (see engagement agreement letter linked here for those restrictions).
The Form ADV Part 3 is only for s SEC registered investment adviser serving a retail investor, which is a natural person, or the legal representative of such natural person, who seeks to receive or receives services primarily for personal, family or household purposes. For additional information about the Form ADV Part 3, please visit https://www.ria-compliance-consultants.com/form-adv-part-3-faqs/.
The $595 drafting service will only be available if you purchase the service and execute a letter of engagement prior to April 1, 2020. After March 31, 2020 these services will be subject to availability and prices will increase. Again, the Form ADV Part 3 is only applicable to SEC registered firms with retail clients.
- Click here to purchase IARD Renewal and ADV Annual Amendment Services.
- Click here to purchase IARD Renewal, ADV Annual Amendment, and Form ADV Part 3 Drafting Services.
*NOTE: Firms managing private funds may be charged additional fees. If you manage one or more private funds, please contact us to discuss the fee prior to engaging RIA Compliance Consultants for the 2019 IARD Renewal and Form ADV Annual Amendment package.
Posted by RCC
Labels: Annual Amendment, IARD
