Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Plans to Expand Its Focus Wall Street's self-regulator is planning to exercise some new muscle. Richard G. Ketchum, the head of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, said in an interview on Tuesday that he would ramp up scrutiny of high speed trading and a batch of complex products. Finra, Mr. Ketchum said, would take aim at so-called leveraged loans and collateralized loan obligations, along with the potential conflicts that brokerage firms face in pitching their own investments over rivals' products. "We're going to be very focused on conflicts of interest," said Mr. Ketchum, the chairman and chief executive of Finra. In a statement, Firna added that it will "pursue potential cross-market abuses and refine its surveillance patterns based on new threat scenarios and regulatory intelligence." The expanded focus comes as Finra on Tuesday also announced that it filed more than 1,500 enforcement actions against financial firms and brokers in 2012, an all-time record for the regulator. Finra, which barred nearly 300 people from the industry, levied more than $100 million in penalties. "It's nice to see an upward trajectory," Mr. Ketchum said. A private nonprofit, Finra monitors 600,000-plus stockbrokers. The group's enforcement arm has struggled to shake the perception that brokers and their firms, which pay for Finra's operations through fees and dispatch representatives to sit on the board, have muzzled the watchdog. But Finra, Mr. Ketchum noted, is now tracking bigger game. He touted the range of cases filed last year, a collection of actions against some of the biggest names on Wall Street. Firna last year sanctioned Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and UBS, among others, for improper sales tactics. Goldman Sachs paid an $11 million fine for failing to keep an eye on its research analysts. The agency's enforcement unit, run by J. Bradley Bennett, also waded into the minutiae of Wall Street products, filing cases involving structured investments and leveraged exchange-traded funds. In 2013, Finra said on Tuesday, the unit could strike a more aggressive tone, investigating other products and the high-speed trading industry. "What I like about the cases we brought is the focus on complex products," Mr. Ketchum said.