RIA Advertising Rule Compliance. Recently, the SEC’s Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations (OCIE) announced the most frequent advertising rule compliance issues identified as a result of its examinations of registered investment advisors.
Here are some examples of the deficiencies OCIE found:
- Submitting potentially false or misleading information in the applications for these awards, rankings or designations;
- Publishing marketing materials that referenced stale ranking or evaluation information or potentially misleading advertisements that did not disclose the relevant selection criteria for the awards or rankings, or the fact that advisers paid a fee to participate in or distribute the results of the survey;
- Making misleading references to employee professional designations that had lapsed or that did not explain the minimum qualifications required to attain these designations; and
- Publishing client endorsements on firm websites, social media pages, reprints of third-party articles, or pitch books.
- Submitting potentially false or misleading information in the applications for these awards, rankings or designations;
- Publishing marketing materials that referenced stale ranking or evaluation information or potentially misleading advertisements that did not disclose the relevant selection criteria for the awards or rankings, or the fact that advisers paid a fee to participate in or distribute the results of the survey;
- Making misleading references to employee professional designations that had lapsed or that did not explain the minimum qualifications required to attain these designations; and
- Publishing client endorsements on firm websites, social media pages, reprints of third-party articles, or pitch books.
For a complete copy of OCIE’s RIA Advertising Rule Compliance Risk Alert issued by OCIE, CLICK HERE!
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