In the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank), Congress has crafted an array of bounty awards and whistleblower protections broadly affecting securities, commodities and futures, and consumer financial products firms and those associated with them. Although there was an opportunity to create incentives promoting internal reporting in aid of corporate compliance programs and to rationalize whistleblowing with standardized definitions, procedures and remedies, Congress went in different directions. The result is a set of whistleblower inducements that may frustrate attainment of corporate compliance objectives by driving whistleblowers outside the organization and an enigmatic patchwork of whistleblower protections laden with internal variations that must be mastered.
Into the mix of entirely new extensions of coverage by way of bounty awards and whistleblower protections, Dodd-Frank adds provisions mandating whistleblowing for nationally recognized statistical rating organizations. It also adds significant changes enabling whistleblowers to fare better under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the False Claims Act.
Allen B. Roberts explores the provisions and variations existing within Dodd-Frank that present compliance challenges, and a trigger for affected firms to revisit compliance policies, practices and procedures, in The Sounds of New Whistleblower Awards and Protections under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (pdf), originally published by Bloomberg Finance L.P. (reprinted with permission).