Each year, FINRA’s Industry Snapshot provides a data-driven look at the state of the securities industry. While the report covers a wide range of topics, several trends stand out for compliance professionals responsible for supervision, training, and risk management.

Here are five key takeaways from FINRA’s latest report.

Dual Registrants Now Outnumber Broker-Dealer-Only Representatives

One of the most notable findings in the 2026 Industry Snapshot is that dual registrants now make up the majority of FINRA-registered individuals.

According to the report, 331,802 individuals are registered as both broker-dealer representatives and investment adviser representatives, compared to 307,921 who are registered solely as broker-dealer representatives. In other words, more than half of FINRA-registered individuals now operate under both regulatory frameworks.

Why This Matters for Compliance Teams

As the number of dual registrants continues to grow, firms face additional supervision and training challenges, including:

  • Disclosure obligations that may differ depending on the capacity in which the representative is acting
  • Recommendation standards that require a clear understanding of applicable regulatory requirements
  • Compensation and conflict considerations that may vary between brokerage and advisory activities
  • Supervisory oversight designed to ensure representatives understand which regulatory framework applies in each client interaction

As the lines between brokerage and advisory services continue to blur, firms should expect regulators to maintain their focus on disclosures, supervision, and role clarity.

The Industry Continues to Grow

The total number of FINRA-registered representatives increased to 639,723 in 2025, continuing a steady upward trend over the past several years.

While growth is generally viewed as a positive sign for the industry, it also introduces additional compliance responsibilities. More registered individuals mean more onboarding, more training assignments, more attestations, and more supervisory activity.

How Growth Impacts Compliance Teams

As firms continue to expand through recruiting, acquisitions, and new business initiatives, maintaining consistency becomes increasingly important.

Key areas often impacted by growth include:

  • Training administration across a larger population of firm members
  • Policy distribution and attestations to ensure employees understand firm requirements
  • Supervisory reviews and documentation needed to support oversight activities
  • Onboarding processes for new members joining the organization

Growth may be a business objective, but it also creates operational demands that compliance teams must be prepared to support.

Movement Between Firms Continues

The Snapshot also highlights continued movement across the industry. In 2025 alone, nearly 46,800 individuals entered FINRA membership while more than 41,500 exited.

Beyond new entrants and departures, the report reflects ongoing movement between firms and registration types.

For compliance departments, workforce mobility creates a constant need to manage onboarding and offboarding processes effectively. Registration updates, disclosure reviews, training assignments, policy acknowledgements, and supervisory transitions all become more important when representatives are changing firms or changing roles.

Even well-designed compliance programs can develop gaps when personnel changes occur frequently. Maintaining consistent processes helps reduce that risk.

Digital Communications Continue to Dominate

Another noteworthy trend comes from FINRA’s review of marketing and communications activity.

Public website content represented the most common marketing material filed with FINRA in 2025, while email, text messaging, and other digital communications continued to account for a significant portion of filings.

Oversight Expectations Haven’t Changed

As firms continue expanding their use of websites, email campaigns, social media, and other digital channels, compliance teams must ensure review, approval, retention, and supervision processes keep pace.

The challenge for firms is no longer whether digital communications are being used. It is ensuring that they are being used compliantly.

Larger Firms Continue to Gain Industry Share

The report also shows that large firms continue to account for the overwhelming majority of registered representatives. In 2025, firms with 500 or more registered representatives represented nearly 84% of all registrations.

As organizations grow, supervision becomes increasingly complex. Larger populations create greater demands around training administration, reporting, branch oversight, policy management, and documentation.

For compliance leaders, scale often becomes one of the biggest operational challenges. The ability to demonstrate consistent oversight across a growing population remains a key component of an effective compliance program.

What Firms Should Be Doing Right Now

The broader trends highlighted in FINRA’s Industry Snapshot point to several practical areas compliance teams should evaluate:

  • Review training programs. As dual registration becomes more common, ensure firm members understand the differences between brokerage and advisory obligations and when each applies.
  • Evaluate onboarding and offboarding procedures. Continued workforce mobility increases the importance of registration updates, disclosures, policy acknowledgements, and training assignments.
  • Assess supervisory scalability. Growing firms should periodically review whether existing compliance processes can effectively support a larger population of representatives.
  • Revisit digital communications oversight. Confirm review, retention, and supervision procedures remain aligned with how employees actually communicate today.
  • Focus on consistency. Growth, acquisitions, and organizational change can create compliance gaps if policies and procedures are not applied consistently across the firm.

The common thread across each of these areas is operational readiness. As firms become larger, more interconnected, and increasingly complex, maintaining consistent oversight becomes just as important as keeping up with regulatory change. The firms best positioned for success will be those that can scale their compliance programs alongside their growth.

View all of FINRA’s findings in the report, here.