MyComplianceOffice Blog

It’s been an eventful year in Financial Services risk and compliance across the globe. From record enforcement levels to market disruptions to evolving regulations around emerging risks like digital assets and crypto, developments have been coming at compliance professionals at a fast and furious pace.

To keep up with the latest regulatory developments and understand the practical impact on compliance, check out MCO's library of 2022 on-demand webinars for expert guidance viewed at your convenience.

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler said in a speech to the Practicing Law Institute that during the fiscal year that just ended on September 30, the agency filed over 700 actions and obtained judgments and orders totaling $6.4 billion, including $4 billion in civil penalties.

 The actions, outlined in a recent press release, covered a wide range of misconduct including charges around insider trading, disclosure failures and omissions, market manipulation and fraud, misleading investors, executive accountability, failure to maintain books and records, failure to register crypto as a security and insufficient policies and procedures. 

It should come as no surprise to compliance teams that the management of Books and Records is in the regulatory spotlight. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently charged several large Wall Street firms with widespread record keeping failures. The firms will be required to pay combined penalties of more than $1.1 billion, and also must make substantive improvements to their compliance policies and procedures around books and records.