The relatively new office of the Investor Advocate has published its annual report. The SEC was mandated to create the Investor Advocate as part of Dodd-Frank. Rick Fleming, previously an attorney with NASAA, was appointed as the Commission’s first IA. This is the second annual report from Fleming’s office (first one is here) and is officially presented to Congress.
The report embedded below follows an outline that was announced earlier in 2015. The office has “identified proposed policy decisions that are likely to harm investors, [and] have begun to make recommendations for regulatory changes that will ease or resolve the problems encountered by investors, and have taken steps to improve the responsiveness of the Commission and SROs to investor concerns.”
New for this year is the inclusion of the Ombudsman’s report, a position held by Tracey McNeil. One interesting note is her report regarding problems with the FINRA arbitration process.
The six areas addressed by Fleming and his staff include:
- Equity Market Structure
- Investor Flight (posting the question if markets are fair)
- Municipal Market Reform
- Data Protection / Cyber Security
- Effective Disclosure
- Edler Abuse (something expected to soar)
The SECIA also reviewed problems regarding financial service providers, as outlined by: the SEC, MASAA, FINRA and MSRB.
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