Touting a historic shift in enforcement philosophy, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has released a report on its results for the past fiscal year — highlighting an intentional drop in case volumes.
On Tuesday, the SEC issued a report detailing its enforcement activity for the year ended Sept. 30, 2025 — indicating that it filed a total of 456 enforcement actions during the year. They include 303 stand-alone actions and 69 “follow-on” proceedings that seek conduct-based restrictions due to related criminal convictions, civil injunctions, or other orders.
This marks a decline from the previous fiscal year, when the regulator launched 583 enforcement actions, including 431 stand-alone actions, and 93 follow-on proceedings — results that also represented a 26% decline in total filings from the previous fiscal year, 2023.
The drop-off in enforcement filing activity in fiscal 2025 would have been even greater were it not for the fact that a record number of cases were filed in the fiscal first quarter, before a sharp shift in enforcement practice took place at the SEC.
Indeed, the regulator filed 200 total enforcement actions in the first quarter of its fiscal 2025 — the period from October through December 2024 — including 118 stand-alone cases, while the SEC was under control of the previous U.S. administration.
The agency noted that in early fiscal 2025, its enforcement division’s activity was “characterized by an unprecedented rush to bring a significant number of cases in advance of the presidential inauguration and the aggressive pursuit of novel legal theories under the prior commission.”
After the changeover in government control in January 2025, the agency has pursued a starkly different approach to enforcement. In a statement, the SEC said that in past years its enforcement resources were “misapplied … to pursue media headlines and run up numbers.”
Under its current leadership, the SEC has dropped a number of cases that it now considers to be unwarranted. It’s also said that certain previous enforcement actions — including cases against several crypto firms for alleged registration violations and against numerous brokerage firms for failing to preserve “off-channel” communications, such as private text messages — are now viewed by the current commission as a poor allocation of resources, a misinterpretation of securities laws, or as efforts to pad enforcement stats.
“This year’s enforcement results clarify the flaws of these actions and their respective penalties and re-establish the definition and measure of enforcement effectiveness, grounded in Congress’s original intent and focused on bringing actions that actually prevent investor harm instead of headlines and inflated numbers,” the regulator said.
Looking ahead, the SEC said it plans to focus on fraud and manipulative conduct, and that it’ll prioritize remediation and repaying investors’ losses.
“Over the past year, the commission has put a stop to regulation by enforcement and re-centred its enforcement program on the commission’s core mission by prioritizing cases that provide meaningful investor protection and strengthen market integrity,” said SEC chairman, Paul Atkins, in a release.
“We have redirected resources toward the types of misconduct that inflict the greatest harm — particularly fraud, market manipulation, and abuses of trust — and away from approaches that prioritized volume and record-setting penalties over true investor protection,” he added. Atkins indicated that the SEC is also more focused on “holding individual wrongdoers accountable, which promotes stronger deterrence and better safeguards investors.”
During the 2025 fiscal year, the SEC reported that it also obtained monetary relief totalling almost US$18 billion, including US$10.8 billion in disgorgement (plus interest) and US$7.2 billion in penalties in fiscal 2025.
Excluding cases where the agency ordered relief that was deemed satisfied by other actions, such as court orders in parallel criminal proceedings, and long-running litigation over an US$8-billion Ponzi scheme, the SEC ordered US$1.4 billion in disgorgement and prejudgment interest, and US$1.3 billion in civil penalties during the fiscal year.
The commission reported that it also returned approximately US$262 million to harmed investors in fiscal 2025, and awarded roughly US$60 million to 48 whistleblowers.