What the Research Tells Us: The SFC

The SFC adopted a more streamlined and specialised approach to enforcement last year, focusing on high priority cases posing the greatest risks to investors and market integrity. 

Many of these priorities will continue in 2017 and beyond. On nepotism, the SFC has promised to start a fresh investigation against a Hong Kong entity involved in the US case; AML, too, continues to be a priority, with the SFC having a dedicated team targeting customer due diligence failings.

The Global Enforcement Review (GER) provides analysis and commentary on global enforcement trends in the financial services industry. To compile this report, we studied published data released by the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the U.S. Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), and the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) of Hong Kong in 2016 and recent years. We have also explored the enforcement trends in various offshore jurisdictions.