February 7, 2017: The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations (“OCIE”) published their latest Risk Alert – “The Five Most Frequent Compliance Topics Identified in OCIE Examinations of Investment Advisers” – which provides interesting insight into the Commission’s 2016 examination results for investment advisers. We have summarized this alert to apprise our clients of the ongoing regulatory scrutiny to which advisers have become accustomed after many years of SEC oversight.
Worthy of note is that the OCIE continues to find deficiencies and refer for enforcement actions on issues which have been attendant to the regulatory regime since the inception of the Compliance Rule in 2004. One exception to this observation is the topic of custody, where the Staff cites ongoing compliance problems with the custody rule, which was substantially amended in 2010.
Given the ongoing ascendancy of compliance within the client due diligence process, it behooves advisers to take note of these findings and to amend policies, procedures, and internal controls to address these issues. Read More
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