The SEC Division of Enforcement recently released its 2021 Annual Report for the fiscal year ended this past September. The report, taking an abbreviated form as a press release this year, shows that enforcement actions were largely stable. Overall, nearly 700 enforcement actions pursued by the Commission, with a total of 434 stand-alone enforcement actions in fiscal 2021, versus 405 in 2020. Actions against advisers and investment companies made up nearly a quarter of these actions and were up 16% to 159 following a relative dip in 2020.

While enforcement action overall was largely stable, total money ordered was down 18%, from $4.6 billion in 2020 to $3.9 billion for 2021. Most interesting was that penalties made up a higher proportion of the total money ordered relative to disgorgement: 38% this year versus 23% last year. The SEC is bringing more cases where there is no financial harm to clients than they have pursued historically.

The Division sought 143 industry bars against individuals and returned $521 million to harmed investors.

The release can be found here, with additional data in the addendum.

Watching the trends? The links to our prior summaries, and the SEC Annual Reports, are below: