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Securities Industry: Strengthening Sales Practice Oversight

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Report Type Reports and Testimonies
Report Date April 25, 1991
Report No. GGD-91-52
Subject
Summary:

GAO reviewed the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) oversight of four self-regulatory organizations' (SRO) monitoring and enforcement of sales practice compliance among securities industry firms.

GAO found that: (1) the only SEC timetable for completely inspecting SRO sales practices applied only to the district offices of one SRO; (2) SEC needed to improve its SRO inspection coverage, evaluation methods, and collection and use of customer complaint and management information; (3) except for one SRO, SEC only sporadically reviewed aspects of SRO sales practice programs since 1986; (4) because SEC reexamined broker-dealers using different methods than SRO used, it generally could not determine why it found violations that SRO missed, and could lose opportunities to recommend actions to improve SRO examination methods; and (5) SEC information systems did not provide adequate data to fully identify sales practice abuses or weaknesses.

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