In our last episode Don’t Panic, Josh walked through how to respond to an initial examination letter, including a handy checklist of items that roboadvisors should always have in good order. But what if your existing practices don’t cover all the examination letter requests?  Do not fret. No examiner is expecting perfection. More important is understanding the examination objective to determine the appropriate response. Here are five questions your organization will want to answer…

You open your inbox, ready to start your day, and what’s the first thing that greets you? A notice that you’re being examined from the SEC’s Division of Examinations (EXAMS), along with an initial request list for information. Time to panic? Of course not. Being examined by the SEC, and other regulatory authorities, is an inherent part of the investment advisory business. But the question remains, now that your firm has been selected for an…

For nearly a decade now, regulators have placed the Chief Compliance Officer (“CCO”) squarely within the sights of enforcement, on the logic that holding CCO’s individually liable for violations would prompt robust compliance programs, and deter lackluster supervision. The reasonableness of such assumptions is a topic for a different post.  However, despite these drastically raised the stakes for compliance leadership, many institutions fail to keep pace with appropriate corporate governance attention, respect, and funding needed to keep…

You probably don’t need to be convinced that information security is critically important. But just in case you do, you should know that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) continues to emphasize the importance it places on information security. In our last two posts, Marc and Craig began our discussion of the SEC’s Division of Examinations’ (EXAMS) 2021 priorities related to information security. In today’s post, we’ll continue that theme by looking at a 2021…