Welcome to Our Fingerprinting Hub for FINRA Broker-Dealers

Verify Candidate Criminal History with
Fingerprint-based Background Checks

Sterling Identity, a First Advantage Company, is designated as Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA's) provider for fingerprinting. 

The success of your candidates’ fingerprinting experience is extremely important to us. We are focused on delivering a simple, reliable, and efficient fingerprinting process that meets FINRA and U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) 17f-2 fingerprinting obligations. Our experienced technicians significantly reduce FBI rejections and comply with FBI requirements for fingerprint capture and submission. We provide FBI criminal history record information results to FINRA, which in turn makes the results available in the FINRA Central Registration Depository (CRD) portal.

Reliable, Simple, Fast Fingerprinting

Broker-Dealer candidates located in the U.S. or its territories are able to choose from Sterling’s Identity Network of 650+ locations* to conveniently have their fingerprints captured electronically via Live Scan devices.
*Sterling Identity, June 2025 

Live Scan

Through Sterling Identity’s fingerprinting services, you can take advantage of live scan capture technology which provides reliable and fast fingerprint collection. 

You’ll benefit from:

• Centralized Ordering. Fingerprint orders are placed and tracked in one-place via our screening dashboard

• Seamless Candidate Experience. Candidates enter their information and select a convenient fingerprinting location in the candidate experience
• Convenient Nationwide Network. Fingerprints are captured via Sterling’s Identity Network with  fingerprinting facilities across the nation on equipment that minimizes rejects
• Fast Results. Most results are sent to FINRA the same day, though some may take longer. 

Hard Card

Hard card fingerprint capture is available to broker-dealer candidates within the U.S. or its territories who require this method. Just like the Live Scan method, broker-dealers must use our dashboard to place fingerprint orders and your candidates must leverage the candidate experience to provide FBI-required information.

For broker-dealers outside the U.S. or its territories, FBI restrictions prohibit electronic fingerprint capture. Therefore, candidates who require fingerprinting in another country must have their fingerprints captured via FINRA-approved hard cards only. Additional program protocols are in place to comply with the FBI, including all completed hard cards for international candidates must be sent to FINRA and FINRA will send to Sterling Identity for processing. 

Resource Center

For step-by-step instructions on how to place fingerprinting orders in our dashboard for broker-dealers, please download the Fingerprinting User Guide. 

Sterling Identity provides a nationwide live-scan fingerprinting collection network.

If your firm requires hard card submissions as part of your fingerprinting process, please follow these instructions. 

We Look Forward to a Successful Partnership

If you need any assistance placing a fingerprinting order or have additional questions, please contact our customer support Monday through Friday, from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. by phone at 1-833-794-2009 or email at finraclientsupport@fadv.com.

For questions about fingerprinting requirements, please see FINRA’s FAQs or contact finrafingerprints@finra.org.