The SEC has elevated Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations Deputy Director Marc Wyatt to to acting director of the unit, which is responsible for examining financial advisors.

Wyatt will assume the duties when the current director Andrew “Drew” Bowden leaves the SEC at the end of this month.

The selection comes as no surprise. Wyatt was a fill-in for Bowden on Tuesday at a Washington, D.C. Bar Association seminar soon after the director’s plans to resign and return to a career in the private sector were announced earlier this week.

Wyatt joined the SEC in December 2012 as a senior specialized examiner focused on examinations of advisors to hedge funds and private equity funds. He is a chartered financial analyst (CFA).

Before coming to the regulator, he was an investment banker at Merrill Lynch for media and telecommunications and at Alex, Brown & Sons for transportation and aerospace.

SEC Chair Mary White praised him for building the private fund unit ,which was created when the Dodd-Frank financial reform act gave the agency the authority to regulate the private investments funds for the first time five years ago.