RIA Compliance Blog
In a speech last month, Peter Driscoll, the director of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations (OCIE), stressed that registered investment advisers must take steps to grant authority to their Chief Compliance Officers, pointing out that the failure to do so is often cited as a deficiency following RIA audits. Driscoll explained that CCOs must be supported and empowered by an RIA’s upper management and that OCIE examiners are looking closely to determine whether that is or is not happening at a particular firm.
Driscoll’s speech comes on the heels of the SEC’s upholding a FINRA enforcement action against the CCO of a broker-dealer who was fined $45,000 and given a 90-day suspension for failing to follow up on “red flags” that the broker-dealer was making payments to a firm owned by a barred broker. A federal appellate court recently affirmed that decision. The speech seemed designed, in part, to allay concerns by CCOs that they are at risk of becoming frequent enforcement targets. Consistent with prior SEC guidance, Driscoll’s speech highlighted that compliance failures are more often the result of other senior firm officers not sufficiently fulfilling their roles to assure that the compliance function is adequately staffed and complied with. Compliance should not fall entirely “on the shoulders of the CCO,” he said.
Too often, says Driscoll, OCIE sees firms take a “check-the-box” approach to their CCO position, meaning they are given just enough authority to complete the bare minimum compliance tasks but aren’t fully integrated into the ongoing operations, direction, or major decisions of the company. He notes that in many examination meetings, the CCO stays quiet as the company’s other senior executives dominate answers to core compliance questions. In other instances, he says, firms try to use the CCO as a “scapegoat” to cover failings by other firm personnel to follow clear policies or guidance. When OCIE notices that the CCO is turned into a target for every compliance problem identified, while CEOs take no responsibility, it is an indication that the firm has not set the proper tone and the top that is critical to all good compliance programs.