National Registration Database - NRD

Sometimes we want to go where everybody knows our name. And sometimes we want to go to one website to find out whether our Canadian broker or investment firm has filed the appropriate registration paperwork. Happily, the National Registration Database, or NRD, exists for that very purpose (the investment firm registration part, not the everybody knowing our name part). It was created in 2003 by the Canadian Securities Administrators to streamline the formerly all-paper process.

In Canada, all investment firms and professionals—we’re talking traders, analysts, securities underwriters, the whole shebang—have to register annually in their home province and in any other provinces where they do business. Also, if a firm significantly changes its business practices, or if an investment professional loses their job or credentials, paperwork needs to be filed for that, too. In the pre-2003 dark ages, this was a cumbersome and time-consuming process. But the advent of the NRD, with its easy access and electronic form filing, made meeting those requirements a lot faster and easier, and—bonus—it’s ended up saving everyone involved quite a bit of cash.