Читать книгу Financial Regulation and Compliance - Kotz H. David - Страница 9

Compliance professionals face a myriad of overlapping and confusing regulations and regulators. In the aftermath of the financial crisis, new regulations and increased aggressiveness on the part of regulators have led to growing demands placed on financial firms. The volume and pace of regulatory change has created new and diverse pressures on compliance functions. A primary reason for the overlapping nature of the regulations is that traditionally, financial regulation has evolved through a series of responses to developments and crises in the financial markets. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (the “Dodd-Frank” Act), enacted on July 21, 2010, offered some of the most sweeping and comprehensive changes to the financial industry since the Great Depression. The chief impetus for the enactment of the Dodd-Frank Act was the perception that deregulation allowed and encouraged Wall Street to indulge in excesses, resulting in the financial crisis.

Over the years, the financial regulatory system has been modified to address various sources of potential financial instability and attempt to provide regulation and a structure for areas with purported regulatory gaps. With each new crisis, efforts are made to address perceived weaknesses in the regulatory system. The result is a complex regulatory system in which federal Agencies have overlapping jurisdictions. Furthermore, Congress has adopted self-regulation by self-regulatory organizations (“SROs”) to prevent excessive government involvement in market operations, and as a more efficient and less expensive way to conduct oversight. However, SRO oversight is, often, in addition to, not instead of, federal regulatory oversight. These structures have resulted in tremendous confusion on the part of compliance professionals whose responsibility it is to make decisions regarding the allocation of often scarce resources to compliance efforts necessitated by the overlapping regulatory schemes.