Conflicts Of Interest

This one cuts through one of the messiest areas in financial compliance: when your compensation or firm structure creates an incentive that might not align with client interests. It covers the Reg BI mitigation hierarchy, fiduciary disclosure requirements, principal trading consent rules, soft dollar safe harbors, and pay-to-play restrictions. Use it when you're evaluating whether a recommendation involves a material conflict, designing disclosure language that's actually specific enough to pass muster, or figuring out whether revenue sharing on proprietary products needs to be disclosed, mitigated, or eliminated outright. The distinction between what you can disclose versus what you must eliminate under Reg BI is crucial and often misunderstood.

skills.sh installs: 682
GitHub stars: 224
last updated: Aug 21, 2026

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Install

$ npx -y skills add joellewis/finance_skills --skill conflicts-of-interest --agent claude-code

Installs into .claude/skills of the current project.

Files

Conflicts of Interest

Regulatory status current as of June 2026 — verify effective dates, dollar thresholds, and pending rulemakings against current SEC/FINRA/FinCEN sources before advising.

Core Concepts

Reg BI Conflict of Interest Obligation

Regulation Best Interest (SEC Rule 15l-1) requires broker-dealers to establish, maintain, and enforce written policies and procedures reasonably designed to identify and at a minimum disclose, or eliminate, all conflicts of interest associated with a recommendation. The obligation has three tiers: (1) disclose material conflicts, (2) mitigate conflicts that create an incentive to place the BD's interest ahead of the retail customer's interest, and (3) eliminate conflicts arising from sales contests, quotas, bonuses, and non-cash compensation that are based on the sale of specific securities or specific types of securities within a limited time period. The elimination requirement is absolute — disclosure and mitigation are insufficient for these enumerated conflicts.

SKILL.md on GitHub