The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday announced a new strategic plan to guide the agency’s work over the next four years with a primary focus on three strategic priorities: investors, innovation and performance.
The focus on investors includes initiatives designed to modernize disclosure and to expand investor choice. The SEC also aims to pursue enforcement and compliance exams that will target misconduct that impacts retail investors.
“Today’s interconnected world market offers new opportunities for securities manipulation, fraud, and abuse, while also giving new life to age-old scams like Ponzi schemes. Through this initiative, the SEC plans to expand our efforts in various areas, including, for example, securities custody and penny stock trading,” the SEC says in a news release.
Alongside those goals, the SEC is seeking to enhance its understanding of how different types of investors participate in the capital markets; and, to bolster its outreach to retail investors.
The strategic plan also highlights the opportunity to utilize innovation to better allocate regulatory resources the commission’s plan to invest in both technology and people to enhance its performance.