July 20, 2012
Gentlemen,
This email is written to express our opposition to the new fee structure proposed by FINRA. In our opinion, FINRA needs to operate within its existing revenues and not burden its members with a substantial increase in fees. In addition, and in our opinion, this substantial increase in fees will discourage members from interacting with FINRA, which would seem to be counter-productive to one of the basic reasons FINRA exists, which is to help its members comply with the myriad rules and regulations that exist in our industry.
We are a small firm that has been a member of FINRA since 1962. In my memory, we have never seen a fee increase of the nature proposed by FINRA. Such a fee increase will have a negative effect upon our business and we encourage you to consider this negative effect upon all of the small firms that are members of FINRA. Encouraging and protecting the ability of small firms to operate has rightfully become a very important topic in our political and economic discourse and we feel that this issue should be strongly considered as one of the important reasons in finding that the proposed fee structure is unwarranted.
Thank you for your consideration in this manner.
David Thrasher
Thrasher & Chambers, Inc.