On October 17, 2016, Marc Wyatt, the Director of the SEC’s Office of Compliance, Inspection and Examinations, gave a keynote address to the National Society of Compliance Professionals titled: Inside the National Exam Program in 2016.  In addition to discussing his general perspective concerning the program, he provided some key statistics that help put OCIE’s exam program in context:

• OCIE has examination responsibility for over 28,000 registrants, including more than 12,000 investment advisers, approximately 11,000 mutual funds and exchange-traded funds, and over 4,000 broker-dealers.
• OCIE has a total staff of approximately 1000 individuals.
• OCIE completed 2,400 total exams in FY 2016.
• Typically, about 10% of OCIE exams are referred to Enforcement.
• FINRA and the SEC have historically examined 50% of BDs each year.
• OCIE has historically examined approximately 10% of registered investment advisers per year.
• Over the past two years, over 2,000 new investment advisers have registered with the SEC.
• OCIE has about 450 staff members focused on Investment Adviser/Investment Company (IA/IC) exams.
• The Private Funds Unit within OCIE currently has four exam managers, and primarily targets the New York, Boston, Chicago and San Francisco areas, each region having a high concentration of registered investment advisers to private funds.
• There are approximately 4500 private fund advisers registered with the SEC.
• Jennifer Duggins, co-head of the Private Funds Unit, recently noted that this unit’s goal was to double the number of examiners assigned to the unit from its current staff of 12-14 to a target of 25-30 examiners.