The SEC’s Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations (“OCIE”) released its examination priorities for 2016 yesterday. For registered advisers, OCIE exams will focus on:

• services offered by advisers to retirement accounts;
• branch office oversight and supervision;
• advisory fee arrangements and recommendations of account types;
• pay-to-play arrangements;
• cybersecurity compliance and controls; and
• private fund exposure to potentially illiquid fixed-income securities.

For registered funds, OCIE exams will focus on:

• compliance by ETFs with applicable SEC exemptive relief and other regulatory requirements, and risks relating to the ETF unit creation and redemption process;
• cybersecurity compliance and controls; and
• registered fund exposure to potentially illiquid fixed-income securities.

In addition to the foregoing focus areas, OCIE exams will focus generally on recidivist activities of advisory personnel and marketing and advertising of new, complex or high risk products.

The exam priorities also indicate OCIE’s continuing focus on never-before-examined investment advisers and investment companies and on private fund advisers (with a particular focus on fees and expenses and evaluating controls and disclosures associated with side-by-side management of performance-based and purely asset-based fee amounts).