What Is the Best Practice and Operations Group?
The BDA’s new Best Practice and Operations Group (BPOG) has a long history supporting key personnel in establishing best practice efforts for broker/dealer operational activities. As the industry has evolved, so have these efforts.
This group was established more than 30 years ago, originally as the Regional Municipal Operations Association (RMOA). Due to the industry changes with rules and processing our group member participation has been reflective of those efforts. Originally known as an operations entity, now our group includes key personnel from compliance, front office and in the smaller firms – management representatives. We too, have undergone a name change to be as inclusive as possible to attract quality input. In 2020, we changed our name to the Regional Fixed Income Best Practices Group, Inc. RFI/BPG which is a not-for-profit membership organization.
Today, the Best Practice and Operations Group is a collective of small, medium, and regional dealers engaged in sales and distribution and public finance of fixed income products. Our intent is to collectively solve the implementation of guidelines and rules for retail & institutional sales efforts as each rule can impact member firms differently.
The Best Practice and Operation Group’s core mission is to foster a shared understanding of operations, compliance, and regulatory intentions. Specifically, this group endeavors to address those issues which our participants are impacted regarding fixed income Operations and Compliance.
Meeting agendas are relevant and timely and are conducted in an interactive roundtable format on a 4 month rotation.
Our agenda’s focus on implementation of and compliance with current regulatory rules/guidance or potential legislative mandates. Meeting topic discussions are collaborative and may be led by various industry participants. If a member is not familiar with a topic, they have an opportunity to learn. If they are familiar with a topic, they accept the responsibility to share.
The Best Practice and Operations Group is proud to have the recognition and continued support by meeting participation by DTCC, FINRA, and MSRB staff.
We welcome any ideas or input on allowing other BDA firm members to actively participate. Please direct any inquiries regarding participation to Don Winton (Crews & Associates), Randy Leeper (DA Davidson), Kathryn Phillips (The Baker Group), or John Fiore (DTCC).
We are very proud to be a part of the BDA team and look forward to working with all of our current and NEW members in a shared positive vision for our industry.
What’s New?
BPOG Spring Meeting
On March 24, 2023, we conducted a meeting during the BDA conference in Dallas. Our early morning breakout session revolved around a number of topics presented by FINRA and MSRB market and member regulation staff, as well as the Office of Financial Responsibility and OGC.
FINRA topics included:
- Shortening TRACE reporting deadline
- Supervision amendments and T+1
- Rule 4210 update – Office of Financial Responsibility
- Exam Update: Gene Davis and John Saxton – Member Supervision
- Market Reg Update: Chris Shull and Cris Nanu
MSRB topics included:
For Dealers:
-
- Supervision and T+1
- 1-minute trade reporting proposal
- Rule G-32 timeline modernization
- Rule G-47 retrospective rule review
- Rule G-12(c) retrospective rule review
Regarding Municipal Advisor’s:
-
- Rule G-3 series 50 exam requalification exemption proposal
- Rule G-40 (testimonials) filing and Rule G-46 (solicitor municipal advisor) filing
