FINRA Rule 2210(b)(1)(A) 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. Rule 2210(b)(4)(A) then requires the firm to keep the communication, in a 17a-4 compliant format, along with the name of any registered principal who approved it and the date that approval was given. Most firms meet the first half. The second half, the evidence, is where a spreadsheet of approvals quietly drifts from the documents it describes.
1. What the Record Has to Contain
Per Rule 2210(b)(4)(A): a copy of the communication, the dates of first and (if applicable) last use, the name of the approving principal and the approval date, and, for a communication not approved before first use, the name of the person who prepared or distributed it. Retention follows SEA Rule 17a-4(b). That is four facts per piece. The workflow below makes three of them a side effect of doing the work.
2. The Workflow
Draft the piece as a task in a marketing-review project, with the file attached. Mark it for approval and name the reviewing principal. In Kavanah, a task approval records who submitted it, who reviewed it, the decision (approved, rejected or changes requested) and when it was reviewed. Comments and requested changes stay on the task. Set the first-use date as the task's due date and close the task when the piece goes out. With compliance mode on, the attachment, the comments and the approval itself are journaled and delivered to your archive, so the approver's name and date sit in the same record as the document.
3. When an AI Drafts the Piece
FINRA's Regulatory Notice 24-09 reminds firms that Rule 2210's content standards apply whether a person or a technology tool generated the communication. An AI-drafted newsletter is a retail communication like any other. In Kavanah, keep the drafting agent's external-send policy on approve (the default when no policy is set) or run it in safe mode, so nothing it writes can reach a customer without a principal's approval.
4. Keep the Procedure and the Tool in Step
Rule 3110(b)(7) requires firms to update written supervisory procedures promptly when the rules or their own supervisory system change, and to tell the people affected. If you change how approvals happen, change the procedure the same week, and point it at the project where approvals live.
For the rest of the controls a regulated firm should ask of its project tool, from archiving to SSO, see our project management software for financial services page.
