In the wake of a pandemic lockdown, the SEC has created a small army of experts that will work with the regulator’s Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations (OCIE) to quickly react to “emerging threats and current market events” and deliver expertise and resources to the SEC regional offices.
The OCIE oversees examinations of SEC-registered investment advisers, investment companies, broker-dealers, self-regulatory organizations (SROs), transfer agents, and other securities industry participants.
Adam Storch
The new Event and Emerging Risks Examination Team (EERT) will be led by Adam D. Storch, who has been named associate director of the EERT, according to the SEC. “In this role, Mr. Storch will oversee a dedicated, multidisciplinary team of specialized examiners, industry experts, accountants, and quantitative analysts,” SEC officials say.
Before his current appointment, Storch served as senior advisor to the director of OCIE, and he was focused on risk, strategy, and innovation, and led initiatives to protect investors, officials say.
Storch joined the SEC as the managing executive and chief operating officer (COO) of the division of enforcement, officials say. He also served as chief of staff and COO of legal and compliance at Marsh & McLennan Companies and vice president of the business intelligence group at Goldman Sachs.
At Goldman Sachs, Storch “managed and led a high performance, results driven team that identified and mitigated financial, regulatory and operational risks as well as corporate governance issues for the firm,” according to his LinkedIn page.
Storch “advised [Goldman Sachs] deal teams on client selection and deal structure prior to presentation and evaluation by the firm’s senior management committees. Worked primarily on principal investments, debt and equity offerings ranging from $100 million to $2 billion,” according to the LinkedIn page.
“As recent events have demonstrated once again, market and operational risks can emerge suddenly,” says Jay Clayton, chairman of the SEC, in a prepared statement.
“We should be working to increase our ability to react, including bringing our various resources to bear to these situations,” Clayton adds.
The EERT’s mission is to work with OCIE staff to provide expertise and support when “significant market events” hit that have a systemic impact or could harm investor assets “such as exchange outages, liquidity events, and cyber-security or operational resiliency concerns.”
In tandem with OCIE exam staff in the regional offices, EERT staff members will focus on “OCIE exam priorities … [and] ensure, through examinations and other firm engagement and monitoring activities, that firms are better prepared to address exigent threats, incidents, and emerging risks,” according to the SEC.
“This new team will work alongside the many dedicated OCIE examiners across the country to quickly address critical market events,” says Marc P. Berger, director of the SEC’s New York Regional Office, in a prepared statement.
With 2020 being such an eventful year, the EERT unit may have to hit the ground running.
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