Recently, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (“FINRA”) announced that, effective June 18, 2016, they are retiring the Flex-Funding and Renewal account pages within Gateway’s Web CRD/IARD and disabling the accounting-related email notifications. Users will need to head over to the new and improved E-Bill section to obtain details about their firm’s flex-funding and renewal accounts. There, they can also find invoices from FINRA, set up alerts, replenish their accounts and review transactions charged against those accounts.
So, what’s new besides the clean new layout? For starters, a sufficient flex-funding balance will now appear as a positive number. The new E-Bill Overview page provides a quick 30-days summary of deposits, fees and withdrawals with links to view transaction details and invoice statuses, add funds and/or request refunds. Users will be able to see pending account activity intra-day as well as sort, filter and export transactions to a .csv file.
Under the Account Details tab, users will find their account activity summarized by date and transaction type with a running account balance. A hyperlink from the transaction type field on a given line opens a new tab with the underlying charges. Users can open multiple tabs with additional details and switch back and forth without losing their previous data. They can add columns, export the results or simply close the tab when done. Alternatively, the user can select the Fees tab to see all charges listed individually. Another improvement is that account detail reports are no longer limited to 30 day periods. A drop down box allows for the activity to be filtered to the last 30 days (default), last 60 or 90 days, last month or a custom date range set up by the user.
Similar information is available for the Renewal Account; however, not to the same level of details. The renewal charges are available by type and regulator (as number of branches and number of registered representatives being renewed with each regulator) but if the firm is interested in the actual names of the individuals and branches being renewed, they would need to pull a registrations report and overlay the two – seems like this area could use some improvement.
There are no exciting changes under the Invoices section. Users will find their open and closed invoices, recent payments and a page where invoice delivery options can be chosen.
Finally, users should review the Alerts section and make sure to set up new notifications as previous email notifications will be turned off on June 18, 2016.
Additional information on FINRA’s E-Bill system, including the user guide and frequently asked questions can be found HERE.
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