As Washington under the business friendly administration of President Donald J. Trump continues its deemphasis on regulation, FINRA’s disciplinary actions, including fines, against the broker-dealers it oversees in 2025 declined, falling to 431 cases, a 22% decrease from the 552 disciplinary actions it reported in 2024, according to a new report.
The annual analysis by law firm Eversheds Sutherland found that FINRA’s top five enforcement issues by total fines were: anti-money laundering; misleading, inaccurate or unbalanced communications; trade reporting; recordkeeping; and Regulation Best Interest.
FINRA enforcement actions spiked in the years after the 2008 credit crisis but have fallen steadily over the past decade. In 2015, FINRA pursued more than 1,300 claims and actions against broker-dealers, more than three times the number last year.
And as FINRA pursued less cases last year than a year earlier, the total dollar amount of fines it levied against broker-dealers increased, to $75 million from $59 million in 2024, a 27% increase, according to the analysis. .
The fines in 2025, however, included a single $26 million fine against one firm, Robinhood Securities. Without that one large fine, 2025’s total fines would have been $50 million, or 15% less than in 2024.
“There is a downward trend in FINRA cases, in part, due to the stock market doing so well the past several years,” said Brian Rubin, partner and co-head of the securities enforcement practice at Eversheds Sutherland and one of the writers of the report.
“There’s also been a decrease in the number of broker-dealers and registered reps,” Rubin said. “And FINRA has been working with firms to resolve issues rather than go to enforcement."
FINRA oversees more than 3,200 broker-dealers and 300,000 registered representatives or sales people.
A FINRA spokesperson on Wednesday declined to comment about the Eversheds Sutherland report. But FINRA officials have made clear in public statements they are trying to give broker-dealers opportunity to be heard in the enforcement process.
And the number of large fines against broker-dealers by FINRA, the ones that pain firms the most, also dropped last year, according to the report. The number of FINRA cases with very large fines, which are deemed “supersized” fines in the report, also decreased in 2025.
“FINRA ordered 10 fines of $1 million or more in 2025, compared with 15 such fines in 2024,” according to the report. “In 2025, FINRA assessed two fines of $5 million or more.”
There were also two fines between $2.5 million and $3.2 million, while the remaining six supersized fines were between $1 million and $1.6 million, according to the report.
“Although total FINRA fines were up in 2025, the amount of restitution ordered by FINRA in 2025 was down,” according to the report. “FINRA ordered restitution of approximately $15 million, which was down 35% from the $23 million in restitution ordered in 2024.”
Only $6 million of the restitution ordered in 2025 was tied to supersized cases of $1 million or more.
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