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What Are Your Options After a Termination?
A ten-page guide for advisors working through a termination: the first 30 days, what your Form U5 says and who sees it, where a record like yours can land, and the questions every compliance review asks.
What's inside
A Form U5 is a filed document, and every firm that considers you will read it closely. This guide walks through the first 30 days, what each part of the U5 signals and who can see it, how hiring firms read the language by kind of record, and the book that can move with you. It closes with how Winthrop takes a file to market, with no blind submissions.
- The first 30 days, and what to hold off on this week
- Reading your U5: Section 3, Questions 7B and 7F, and who sees what
- Illustrative U5 language, and how the market reads each kind
- Where the doors are by channel, and the book that can move
- The eight questions a compliance review will ask
We'll email it to you as soon as you submit (in Gmail, check the Promotions tab).
What your U5 says, and who sees it
Your former firm must file the Form U5 within 30 days of the termination and give you a copy when it does. BrokerCheck does not show the Section 3 reason or its explanation, while a yes to Question 7F appears publicly as "Employment Separation After Allegations." The next FINRA member firm to register you reads all of it, amendments included.
What to hold off on this week
The first days after a termination set the tone for everything a hiring firm reads later. Separation agreements and proposed U5 language are for your own securities attorney to review before you sign, and uncoordinated outreach spreads your story before you have set it down accurately. The guide lists six things that can wait until the record is in hand.
Common questions
What is in the guide?+
Ten pages in three parts. Where you stand covers the first 30 days, FINRA's Maintaining Qualifications Program and how to read your U5. Where you can land covers illustrative U5 language, the doors by channel and a worksheet for the portable book. How Winthrop works covers our five phases and the eight questions a compliance review asks.Can I still be hired after a termination?+
A single termination with no allegations, honestly explained, often narrows the list of firms without closing it. More than one disclosure narrows it again, and firms weigh the pattern more heavily than any single item. Where a record like yours can land depends on the record, the book and what you want next.How long do I have before I must retake my exams?+
FINRA requires its representative and principal exams again once two years pass without registration, unless you keep them through FINRA's Maintaining Qualifications Program. If you qualify, you elect it within two years of the termination, complete the continuing education FINRA assigns each year, and can hold a qualification for up to five years. The program covers FINRA exams only: state exams such as the Series 63, 65 and 66 fall under NASAA's separate Exam Validity Extension Program, which not every state has adopted.
Read next
- The first 72 hours after a termination
The first steps, in the order they matter.
- The Form U5, and what comes next
How the form works and what the next firm reads.
- Rapid Response
How Winthrop & Co. helps in the first days after a termination.
Flagship research
The full picture lives in The State of Advisor Movement.
Six months of measured advisor movement: the firm-by-firm ledger, destination channels, deal economics, and the rent-or-own framework, in an interactive edition and a 41-page print edition. Both free.