FINRA Rule 3290 Approved: The Real Change Is in .03

The SEC Approved FINRA Rule 3290 on September 15. No One Has to Comply Yet.

The SEC approved FINRA Rule 3290 (Outside Activities Requirements) on September 15, 2026, in Release No. 34-106381, File No. SR-FINRA-2026-001, and the order was published in the Federal Register on September 18, 2026, at 91 FR 59259. The new rule replaces and deletes both FINRA Rule 3270 (Outside Business Activities of Registered Persons) and FINRA Rule 3280 (Private Securities Transactions of an Associated Person), collapsing two separate notice-and-approval regimes into one.

But here is the part the trade coverage is missing. The consolidation is the headline; Supplementary Material .03 is the money. As approved, .03 retires NASD Notice to Members 94-44 (May 1994) and 96-33 (May 1996) — the guidance that, for three decades, obligated broker-dealers to supervise and retain records of their registered persons' investment advisory activity conducted at unaffiliated investment advisers.

If you run a hybrid platform, an independent broker-dealer with dually registered representatives, or a fintech distribution business that carries a FINRA membership, that single change touches your supervisory headcount, your vendor contracts, your revenue-sharing arrangements, and your exam exposure. Here is what happened, what actually changed, and what your leadership team should decide before FINRA sets the transition date.

Nine Months, an Order Instituting Proceedings, and a Partial Amendment

Rule 3290 did not arrive quietly. FINRA solicited public comment on the framework in Regulatory Notice 25-05, issued March 14, 2025, with a comment deadline of May 13, 2025. That pre-filing notice drew 216 comments.

The formal path through the SEC took most of 2026:

• January 22, 2026 — FINRA filed SR-FINRA-2026-001 under Section 19(b)(1) of the Exchange Act and Rule 19b-4.
• February 3, 2026 — The SEC published the notice of filing (Release No. 34-104746, 91 FR 5003); the comment period closed February 24, 2026.
• May 1, 2026 — The SEC issued an Order Instituting Proceedings (Release No. 34-105355), published May 6, 2026, and FINRA filed an amendment the same day.
• September 15, 2026 — Approval, as modified by Partial Amendment No. 1.

An Order Instituting Proceedings is not a formality. It is the SEC putting a self-regulatory organization's filing on the record for adversarial scrutiny, and it signals that the Commission had unresolved questions about scope. The approval came two weeks before the statutory deadline, after FINRA amended its own proposal. Read the amendment history before you read the summary memo your service providers send you.

Supplementary Material .03 Ends a 1994 Supervisory Duty — For FINRA Purposes Only

This is the distinction most firms will get wrong, and it is expensive in both directions.

What changed

NASD Notices 94-44 and 96-33 were the basis for a supervisory architecture that many independent broker-dealers built their economics around: because the broker-dealer was expected to supervise a representative's advisory activity at an outside RIA, it maintained oversight infrastructure, demanded books and records access, and in many cases took a share of the advisory revenue as the price of that oversight. Rule 3290.03, as approved in the Commission's order, retires that guidance.

What did not change

FINRA relief is not adviser relief. The Advisers Act obligations of the outside RIA are untouched. Rule 206(4)-7 compliance programs, Section 204 books and records, and the adviser's fiduciary duty to its clients all sit exactly where they sat on September 14, 2026.

Regulation Best Interest is untouched. If a dually registered person recommends securities to a retail customer in a brokerage capacity, Reg BI and the firm's Rule 3110 supervisory system still apply to that recommendation.

State regulators did not vote. State securities administrators supervise investment advisers and adviser representatives under their own statutes and have not retired anything.

Your contracts did not self-execute. Many affiliation agreements, clearing arrangements, and errors-and-omissions policies impose oversight duties by private contract that survive the retirement of the NASD notices. Relief from a FINRA rule does not amend a signed agreement or a carrier's underwriting condition.

The practical question is therefore not whether you may stop supervising outside advisory activity. It is whether you should, given what your insurance, your custodians, and your enterprise risk committee expect.

What Your Leadership Team Should Decide Before FINRA Sets the Transition Date

No compliance deadline exists yet. The September 15, 2026 approval order did not include an effective date. FINRA has stated it will announce the effective date separately in a regulatory notice, and until that transition date, firms must continue applying Rules 3270 and 3280 exactly as written. The SEC's approval order is the operative document; the calendar is FINRA's to publish.

That gap is an advantage. Use it.

1. Inventory every outside activity currently on file. Sort the population into activities that remain reportable under Rule 3290, activities that fall away, and activities whose treatment changes because of .03. The mapping exercise is the gating item for everything else.
2. Rewrite written supervisory procedures in draft, not in production. Your WSPs cannot cite retired NASD notices after the transition date, and they cannot abandon Rule 3270 and 3280 procedures before it. Maintain both versions with a documented switch date.
3. Reprice the hybrid arrangement deliberately. If your broker-dealer collects a share of outside advisory revenue as consideration for supervision that FINRA no longer requires, expect representatives to ask why. Decide the answer before a recruiter hands it to them.
4. Re-paper affiliation and access agreements. Oversight rights you want to keep for enterprise risk reasons need to live in contract, not in a retired notice.
5. Brief the board once, with numbers. Supervisory headcount, technology licenses tied to outside-activity surveillance, and revenue attributable to the oversight function are all board-level line items.

Firms that treat this as a procedures cleanup will spend the transition period rewriting documents. Firms that treat it as a business-model question will use the same period to decide what their broker-dealer is actually for. Examiners will ask about the procedures either way, and SEC exam counsel should see the draft WSPs before the transition notice lands, not after.

Key Takeaways

• FINRA Rule 3290 is approved but not yet effective. The SEC signed the order on September 15, 2026 (Release No. 34-106381, 91 FR 59259), and FINRA will announce the effective date in a separate regulatory notice; Rules 3270 and 3280 govern until then.
• The consolidation is not the story; Supplementary Material .03 is. It retires NASD Notices to Members 94-44 and 96-33, ending the FINRA-based expectation that broker-dealers supervise and retain records of advisory activity at unaffiliated investment advisers.
• Relief under a FINRA rule is not relief under the Advisers Act. Rule 206(4)-7, Section 204 recordkeeping, state adviser rules, and Regulation Best Interest are unchanged.
• The economics of hybrid supervision are now negotiable. Revenue sharing justified by a supervisory duty that no longer exists will be questioned by representatives and by recruiters.
• The nine-month path included an Order Instituting Proceedings. The SEC issued Release No. 34-105355 on May 1, 2026 and approved only as modified by Partial Amendment No. 1, so read the amendment history rather than a summary.