November 10, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C.— Benjamin Schiffrin, Director of Securities Policy for Better Markets, issued the following statement after the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) issued its enforcement results for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2026:
“The SEC Enforcement Division’s failures are so extensive that it should be renamed the SEC’s Non-enforcement Division. SEC Chair Paul Atkins and other top SEC officials have said repeatedly recently that the SEC’s enforcement program should not be measured by the number of cases it brings. And now we know why: its enforcement statistics for fiscal year 2026 show the SEC has abandoned its duty to protect investors. The decline in SEC enforcement activity during Chair Atkins’s tenure is an astounding dereliction of duty:
Source: Better Markets
“Investors should not be fooled by the SEC’s attempts to mislead them with its statements about how the number of cases it brings each year is irrelevant. Those statements are nothing more than an attempt to distract from the SEC’s pathetic enforcement record under Chair Atkins. Somehow the SEC failed even more in fiscal year 2026 than it did in fiscal year 2025, bringing 25% fewer cases in 2026 than it did in 2025, which was already an historic 20-year low. The SEC also went from obtaining orders for almost $18 billion in monetary sanctions in 2025 to only $1 billion in 2026, a precipitous drop in monetary relief.
“Chair Atkins says that ‘enforcement actions and financial remedies are important measures of activity, but they are not the only or most telling measures.’ Yet it is not clear by what metric he thinks SEC enforcement should be measured. And even taking him at his word, the SEC fails. The SEC says that rather than focusing on the quantity of cases that it brings, it wants to emphasize individual accountability to deter misconduct. But it then brings enforcement actions involving egregious misconduct without holding any individuals liable. The simple fact is that the SEC is not focused on quality or quantity. The SEC is focused on protecting corporations rather than prosecuting misconduct, to the detriment of the investors that the SEC supposedly exists to protect.”
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Better Markets is a nonprofit, nonpartisan economic advocacy organization dedicated to making our economy work for all Americans; protecting the interests of the American people in Washington policymaking; and ensuring Wall Street, the financial industry, and their allies support the real, productive economy. Better Markets works every day to support policies that create sustainable, durable, and broad-based economic growth and rising living standards, while protecting jobs, savings, retirements and more. To learn more, visit www.bettermarkets.org.
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