FINRA has requested comment on a proposal to modernize Rule 2210 (Communications with the Public). Regulatory Notice 26-14 (July 9, 2026) would replace the requirement that a registered principal approve every retail communication before use with a requirement that each member adopt written procedures deciding for itself which communications need approval. The Notice also adjusts two filing requirements and would delete the disclosure checklist governing communications that contain recommendations. Comments are due September 11, 2026. Every member marketing to retail investors is affected; those with the most to gain, and the most work to do, are firms distributing through social media or generating communications with artificial intelligence.
The approval requirement that social media and AI have outrun
FINRA Rule 2210(b)(1) requires an appropriately qualified registered principal to approve each retail communication before the earlier of its use or its filing with FINRA’s Advertising Regulation Department. A retail communication is a written communication distributed or made available to more than 25 retail investors within any 30 calendar-day period. The rule already carves out from pre-use approval, and supervises under the general supervision rule instead, communications posted on an online interactive electronic forum and communications that make no financial or investment recommendation and do not otherwise promote a product or service of the member. FINRA Rules 2210(b)(1)(D), 3110.
The interactive-forum carve-out rests on a distinction between static and interactive content that has stopped tracking reality. A post may be static in that only its author can edit it and interactive in that anyone can comment on or share it in real time. FINRA states plainly that the line has blurred, and makes a more substantive point besides: the distinction is a poor proxy for risk. A post by a paid financial influencer carries risk arising from that influencer’s qualifications and conflicts, and that risk does not change with the comment settings.
Artificial intelligence compounds the problem by volume. Retail communications now routinely include material produced by chatbots and other generative tools, James A. Fanto, Jill I. Gross & Norman S. Poser, Broker-Dealer Law and Regulation § 12.03 (5th ed. 2026), and a rule requiring a named principal to clear each item before first use does not scale to output generated at machine speed.
What the proposed supervisory standard would require
Under the proposal, a member must establish written procedures, appropriate to its business, size and structure, determining which categories of retail communications require principal pre-use approval. The procedures must be reasonably designed to ensure compliance with the content standards of Rule 2210(d). Where they do not require review of every retail communication before first use, they must provide for education and training of associated persons, documentation of that training, and surveillance and follow-up confirming the procedures are actually applied. The member must maintain evidence of that and produce it to FINRA on request.
Members already running this framework should recognize it. It is substantially the standard Rule 2210(b)(3) has long applied to institutional communications, which requires a firm that forgoes pre-use principal review to train its personnel, document that education, conduct surveillance reviews testing compliance, and document both those reviews and any corrective action taken. Fanto, Gross & Poser, Broker-Dealer Law and Regulation § 12.03. The proposal extends that architecture to retail communications and adds eight codified risk factors as proposed Supplementary Material .01, among them product complexity, the qualifications of whoever prepared or was paid to endorse the content, the presence of performance data or rankings, the medium and distribution method, and the firm’s own history of communication problems.
Two limits deserve attention. Retail research reports would still require principal review before first use, expressed as a procedures obligation rather than a flat command. And the content standards do not change: a member remains fully responsible for a communication that is not fair and balanced, whether a principal cleared it, an AI tool drafted it, or no human read it before publication.
The filing changes are narrower than the supervisory change
FINRA proposes two adjustments to Rule 2210(c). First, the one-year pre-use filing obligation on new members would begin when a new member files its first communication with the Department rather than on the CRD effective date of its membership. Roughly 60 percent of first-year filers waited at least 91 business days after their effective date before filing anything, which quietly shortened the review period the rule was written to create. This change tightens an obligation rather than relaxing one.
Second, retail communications concerning registered investment companies that include self-published performance rankings or comparisons against other investment companies would move from pre-use filing to filing within 10 business days of first use. Of 1,315 such filings received between 2023 and 2025, approximately 13 percent were noncompliant, against 24 percent for all communications filed before first use. Members would no longer have to withhold these communications during a review that averaged 17 business days in 2025.
Recommendations: a disclosure checklist traded for a fair-and-balanced standard
FINRA Rule 2210(d)(7) currently requires a retail communication recommending securities to rest on a reasonable basis and to carry specified disclosures — whether the member makes a market in the security, whether the preparer holds a financial interest in it, whether the member managed or co-managed an offering of the issuer’s securities within the preceding 12 months — together with detailed backup requirements for any reference to past specific recommendations that would have been profitable.
FINRA proposes to delete those provisions and substitute a general prohibition on referring to a past specific recommendation unless the reference is fair and balanced, language drawn from the investment adviser marketing rule. 17 C.F.R. § 275.206(4)-1(a)(5) (2025). The lineage runs in both directions. Several of the current Rule 2210(d)(7) requirements were themselves modeled on the Advisers Act advertising rule the Commission repealed in 2021 — Rule 2210(d)(7)(C) on that rule’s paragraph (a)(2). 17 C.F.R. § 275.206(4)-1 (repealed 2021); Fanto, Gross & Poser, Broker-Dealer Law and Regulation § 12.03. FINRA is following the Commission’s repeal rather than breaking new ground. Regulation Best Interest is unaffected. 17 C.F.R. § 240.15l-1 (2025).
What to do before September 11
Members that already maintain risk-based procedures for institutional communications and correspondence will find the proposal cheaper to implement, because the framework exists and only its scope changes. Members that would rather keep pre-use approval for everything may do so; the proposal permits it, and at modest volume that may remain the cheaper answer.
Firms should also account for a consequence the Notice does not dwell on. Rule 2210’s recordkeeping provisions require, for a communication not approved before first use, a record of the person who distributed it. Moving material out of pre-use approval therefore shifts a recordkeeping burden onto distribution, and a firm that revises its procedures without revising its records will have traded one deficiency for another.
FINRA poses questions under eleven headings, including what factors beyond the eight listed should inform a firm’s procedures, how firms currently supervise AI-generated communications, and whether the static-interactive distinction should be eliminated, modified or retained. It also asks about a category it has not previously addressed directly: automatically generated, primarily factual messages such as balance and position summaries, margin notifications, order status updates and customer-configured price alerts. Comments are due by September 11, 2026, and may be submitted through FINRA’s online comment form, by email, or in hard copy to the Office of the Corporate Secretary. FINRA posts all comments publicly as received.
For more information. If you have questions about FINRA Rule 2210, supervision of social media or AI-generated communications, or whether to submit a comment letter, contact Evans Law, PC.