Gary Gensler, chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, said he is supporting president Biden’s request of a $ 2.4 billion budget for the agency in the fiscal year of 2024, partly to add an additional 170 positions.
The SEC is seeking the funding to deal with the possibility of more enforcement of securities regulations as financial markets see growth and changes, Gensler said in testimony to Congress Wednesday.
The number of positions at the SEC funded by Congress was 5,303 for the fiscal year of 2023, up 400 from 2022, Gensler said.
From 2017 to 2022, average daily trading in the equity markets more than doubled to over 77 million transactions from 30 million, Gensler noted. Meanwhile, technology such as electronic trading, the cloud, and artificial intelligence has been transforming market and business models, Gensler said.
Gensler also again highlighted the risks posed by the crypto industry for investors as it remains largely unregulated. “We’ve seen the Wild West of the crypto markets, rife with noncompliance, where investors have put hard-earned assets at risk in a highly speculative asset class,” Gensler said.
Overall, the SEC’s enforcement department brought over 750 enforcement actions in the fiscal year of 2022, up 9% year-over-year. The actions resulted in orders for $ 6.4 billion in penalties and disgorgement, according to Gensler.
The agency’s examinations division conducted more than 3,000 examinations across its registrants, from advisers to broker-dealers to exchanges in fiscal year 2022, Gensler said.