Americans over 60 lost more than $4.8 billion to fraud in 2024. Across all ages, the FBI reported $16.6 billion in fraud losses that same year — a 33% jump from 2023. Those numbers sit at the center of Regulatory Notice 26-02, in which FINRA requested comment on the most significant expansion of its senior-investor and anti-fraud toolkit since the original trusted contact and temporary hold rules were adopted. The comment period closed March 9, 2026, and firms should expect these proposals, or a close variant of them, to move toward formal rulemaking.
The proposal touches two existing rules and introduces a new one, and the throughline across all three is the same: current tools are too narrow, either in whom they protect or how long they give a firm to act.
Three moving pieces
- Rule 4512 (Trusted Contacts) gets more flexible. FINRA proposes letting firms use the term "emergency contact" as an alternative to "trusted contact person" — commenters said customers respond better to that language — and would let customers authorize one trusted contact across all their accounts at a firm, rather than naming one account by account.
- Rule 2165 (Temporary Holds) gets a longer runway. The current maximum hold period is 55 business days. FINRA proposes extending that to as much as 145 business days, added in three 30-business-day increments, each conditioned on the firm following up with the relevant authority and continuing to have a reasonable belief that exploitation occurred. FINRA's own data shows this isn't a hypothetical problem: in a 2020 member survey, roughly 28% of firms reported cases that took more than 50 business days to resolve.
- A brand-new Rule 2166 would cover every customer, not just seniors. Modeled on Rule 2165 but far more compact, proposed Rule 2166 would let a firm place a temporary delay of up to five business days on a transaction or disbursement for any customer, regardless of age, when there's a reasonable belief of fraud. FINRA frames it as a "speed bump" — enough time to reach the customer, walk them through why the transaction looks like a scam, and let them reconsider away from a perpetrator's pressure.
The trusted contact and temporary hold framework was never limited to seniors in theory, but Rule 2165's protections only apply to "Specified Adults" — people 65 or older, or adults FINRA believes have a diminished mental or physical capacity. Proposed Rule 2166 is FINRA's answer to the reality that sophisticated, AI-enabled fraud schemes now target investors of every age and sophistication level.
How Compliers Can Help
We help firms build the escalation procedures, training, and documentation that trusted contact and temporary hold rules require — and we'll help you get ahead of these proposed changes before they become mandatory. Learn more about our Code of Ethics & Oversight engagement.
Why firms should start preparing now, not after adoption
Comment periods on FINRA proposals often run months or years before a final rule takes effect, but the direction here is clear enough that waiting has a real cost. Firms that already have committed teams handling senior-investor issues have an easier path: FINRA's proposal would also expand who's authorized to place, extend, or terminate a hold beyond people in formal "supervisory, compliance or legal" roles, to include associated persons in a dedicated senior-investor-protection or fraud-prevention function. Firms without that kind of team today should think now about who would own a Rule 2166 "speed bump" decision if it were adopted tomorrow — because five business days doesn't leave much room to figure out an escalation path on the fly.