The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has published its examination priorities for fiscal year 2027, a roadmap that signals sharper regulatory attention on conflicts of interest, digital assets, cyber resilience and the real-world effectiveness of compliance programmes.
The agenda covers a wide range of activity, but four themes stand out for firms and their staff, detailed StarCompliance.
First, the regulator is keeping fiduciary duties and conflicts of interest firmly in view. Firms will be expected to show working controls over personal trading, employee monitoring, disclosures of outside business activities and the even-handed application of internal policies.
Second, the SEC is watching how firms respond to tokenisation, new asset classes, advanced technologies and shifting market infrastructure. Compliance frameworks built for traditional markets may need reworking to cope with more complex trading environments. Third, protecting client information, cyber defences and operational resilience remain central concerns, with integrated data, automated processes and centralised oversight presented as ways to cut vulnerabilities and raise efficiency.
Fourth, supervision of broker-dealers, trading conduct and programme effectiveness are under the microscope. Regulators want proof that controls operate in practice, backed by robust monitoring and audit trails that can withstand scrutiny, rather than policies that exist only on paper. Annual compliance reviews and reports are also likely to attract attention from the SEC, other regulators and internal auditors.
For compliance leaders, the release frames the priorities as a prompt to reassess existing arrangements. Recommended areas of focus include tightening oversight of employee conduct and approvals, testing whether current systems can handle emerging risks, removing data silos and manual processes, and keeping documentation and reporting consistently ready for inspection. Readiness, it argues, should be continuous rather than triggered by a regulator’s arrival.
The SEC’s list is not exhaustive and may shift during the year as markets and threats change. Firms are urged to ask whether their procedures are reasonably designed to manage conflicts, when controls were last tested, and whether vendors can support programmes facing new products, markets and business combinations.
Star promotes a Connected Compliance approach, which it says unifies employee data, policies, monitoring and workflows to give firms a fuller picture of risk. Through automation and integrated technology, the company contends that compliance teams can lighten administrative workloads, improve consistency and move from reactive checks towards proactive risk management, adapting to new rules and growing operational demands without added complexity.
Read the full StarCompliance post here.
Copyright © 2026 RegTech Analyst
Copyright © 2026 RegTech Analyst
