SEC exams of investment advisors could go up 30 percent this year, said Pete Driscoll, acting director of the Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations (OCIE).
The share of all SEC-registered advisors examined by OCIE may surge to 15 percent from last year’s 11 percent, Driscoll predicted on Thursday.
He attributed much of the increase to the shift of some OCIE broker-dealer examiners into investment advisor duty.
Driscoll’s comments came following the first session of Finra's National Compliance Outreach Program for Broker-Dealers at SEC headquarters in Washington D.C.
During the event, Finra President and CEO Robert Cook and SEC Commissioner Michael Piwowar said the two regulators should have joint efforts to help small firms thrive by cutting compliance cuts.
At the same time, they said the spending reductions should not come at the expense of lowering investor protection.
Piwowar said there is going to be much more coordination between the SEC, Finra and the bank regulators on oversight of broker-dealers employed by subsidiaries of bank holding companies.
One brokerage this could have a measurable impact on is Bank of America's Merrill Lynch.
Continuing a running theme of his about reining in high-risk brokers, Cook said there will be more standards and rules for them in the coming months.
“There’s strong support in the industry,” he said.