According to a FINRA enforcement executive at Sifma’s recent Compliance and Legal Conference, the regulatory body is planning to complete at least 1,000 Regulation Best Interest exams of broker-dealers by year's end.  While FINRA has been examining Reg BI violations since the rule went live, officials have exclusively reported violations in industry-wide notices such as the 2023 FINRA Report on Exam and Risk Monitoring Program, instead of seeking enforcement actions against firms or reps. However, according to FINRA officials, “a year and a half after Reg BI went live, the enforcement gloves are coming off.” Christopher Kelly, FINRA’s acting head of enforcement, said, “A number of the firms that have been warned still haven’t remedied the [violations] the examiners…warned them about, so those will often result in referrals to enforcement.” St. Louis added that FINRA is taking a hard look at variable annuities and has at least one Reg BI enforcement in the works dealing with conflicts surrounding the contracts.

Finsum:After a year and a half of warnings, the gloves are coming off for FINRA as they plan on examining just under one-third of FINRA’s 3,300 member firms for compliance with Reg BI.

While many ESG investors are drawn to the appeal of helping the environment with their investments, the two-year rally in oil and gas stocks has become too much to ignore. The energy sector has led the market for two years rising 135% in 2021 and 2022 compared with a 2.2% gain in the S&P 500 Index. Analysts expect the sector to jump another 22% in 2023, despite its 5.8% decline so far, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. ESG firms have taken notice. Rockefeller Capital Management takes pride in its ESG investing record. While the firm’s larger portfolio follows multiple strategies that include ESG and non-ESG, its $19 billion equity portfolio now has a 6% energy weighting. This is even more than the S&P 500’s energy weighting of 4.8%. Plus, clients in Rockefeller’s wealth management arm, which is separate from its asset management arm, have almost tripled their holdings in Chevron Corp. In fact, the stake’s value has quintupled to $251 million over two years. Their clients have also been buying tens of thousands of shares in Brazilian oil producer Petroleo Brasileiro SA, Diamond Offshore Drilling Inc., and several other S&P 500 Energy Index members, including Exxon Mobil Corp. and APA Corp.

Finsum:With a massive two-year run, and a strong return expected this year, energy stocks have attracted clients of firms such as Rockefeller Capital Management that take pride in their ESG investing record.

One of the biggest challenges for financial advisors is growing your client base. Rebecca Lake, CEPF recently penned an article for SmartAsset providing strategies on how to get more clients. According to Lake, the first step is to know your audience. Knowing whom you want to serve can help shape your marketing efforts in appealing to your ideal client. This can include demographics such as age range, marital status, children, and average annual income. Lake also recommends niching down in terms of your advisory services. This can help grow your client base by focusing on a smaller number of potential clients and offering a specialized service that they're seeking. Lake notes that the smaller the niche, the “greater the opportunity you have to grow your client base if you're one of only a handful of advisors who are meeting the needs of that market segment.” The next strategy is to fine-tune your brand. This can include a good logo, especially when it's linked to a catchphrase or slogan. Next, networking with other individuals in the financial services community can boost your visibility. The final strategy is to leverage your existing clients by asking for referrals, which can be a highly effective way to get new clients, but make sure to frame the ask carefully.

Finsum:Rebecca Lake wrote an article for SmartAsset on how to grow your business, including strategies such as knowing your audience, finding a niche, fine-tuning your brand, networking, and asking for referrals.

When stocks are down like they were last year, investors usually look towards treasuries for safety. But last year was unlike any other year. While the S&P 500 fell 18%, the Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate Bond index slumped 13%. However, a year like 2022 is unlikely to happen again any time soon. According to analysts, that leaves “room for those bonds to reclaim their role as a core risk-off allocation for asset owners this year.” For example, when SVB Financial Group recently announced hefty losses, the S&P 500 index fell 3.4% between March 8th and March 13th. But investors looking for a safe haven in long-dated Treasuries sent yields plunging, providing bondholders with a gain of more than 4%. Many analysts expect the conditions that led to close correlations between the stock and bond market “to prove ephemeral.” According to Jason Vaillancourt, global macro strategist with Putnam Investments, the biggest risk for those strong correlations is when "The Fed gets really fired up to fight inflation, as with the central bank's 'uh-oh' moment last year — when inflationary pressures it had deemed transitory proved anything but, forcing the central bank to shift aggressively to catch-up mode.” He added, “With the Fed frontloading its fight against inflation last year, the conditions required to maintain correlations at 1 this year are unlikely to persist.”

Finsum:With the Fed front-loading its fight against inflation last year, the conditions that led to a high correlation between the stock and bonds markets, aren’t likely to persist.

With many economists predicting an economic downturn, investors may wonder how ESG investments will perform in a major recession. To find the answer, Portfolio Adviser asked a cross-section of industry commentators for their views. According to Max Richardson, senior director, of wealth planning at Investec Wealth & Investment, research on ESG performance during recessions is limited, but available studies suggest mixed results. For instance, a study by MSCI found that ESG stocks outperformed traditional ones during the 2008 financial crisis, with a lower decline in stock prices and a faster recovery. However, a study by the London School of Economics found that ESG stocks performed no better or worse than traditional stocks during the 2008 crisis. In fact, the impact of the crisis on ESG stocks was largely dependent on the specific industries and companies, not their ESG status. Amanda Sillars, fund manager and ESG director at Jupiter Merlin believes funds that exclude entire sectors on ESG grounds, which are typically oil, gas, miners, and defense, "run the risk of delivering weak absolute performance if those sectors outperform.” In contrast, “Fund managers who retain a broad investment universe and select companies that generate strong cashflows, minimal debt and are valued cheaply, while keeping company engagement at the heart of their investment strategy, are likely to fare better during a recession.

Finsum:According to a wealth planner, studies on ESG performance during a recession are mixed, but a fund selector believes that managers who focus on engagement and not exclusion will fare better in a recession.