FINRA Exception Opens Private Fund Marketing to Projected Returns
A newly approved FINRA exception lets fund managers and their placement agents use projected performance and targeted returns with eligible investors, reopening a long-restricted element of private fund marketing.
FINRA has approved an exception that, as described in the source, opens the door to including projected performance and targeted returns in private fund marketing for eligible investors, extending what placement agents and broker-dealers may communicate under FINRA's communications framework. Historically, the prohibition on projected performance generally kept projections out of private fund pitchbooks and placement agent decks, a constraint many private equity and private credit managers treated as a hard limit.
Why sophisticated counsel care: the change sits at the intersection of marketing claims, substantiation obligations, and the distinct duties of advisers, general partners, and the placement agents and broker-dealers they engage. A projection is only as defensible as the assumptions behind it, and the exception's conditions - including which investors qualify and what performance must accompany - determine whether a given deck can be shown to a given audience.
Concrete action: review marketing and communications policies, deck templates, and placement agent engagement terms, and map which investor categories may now receive projected performance, while confirming the treatment of targeted returns specifically.
Uncertainty: this single source does not state the effective or compliance date, the rule filing or notice reference, or the full conditions of the exception; those should be confirmed against FINRA materials before reliance.