The $8.2 Billion Wake-Up Call
Why Your Firm Needs Smarter Trade Surveillance
In fiscal year 2024, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) secured a record-breaking $8.2 billion in financial remedies, which was the highest annual total in its history. This staggering figure is even more surprising given that the number of enforcement actions decreased, signaling a shift toward fewer but far more severe penalties. Regulators are no longer just targeting individuals. They are zeroing in on enterprise-level failures, particularly in areas like trade surveillance, off-channel communications, and recordkeeping.
As regulatory scrutiny grows, compliance teams face mounting pressure to deliver proactive, unified oversight. Manual processes are a thing of the past—they offer fragmented views of firm trading activity and simply can’t keep up. Without visibility across departments, entities, and time zones, firms risk missing key signals—and paying the price.
Today’s compliance demands intelligent systems that can detect risk patterns in real time and escalate them for investigation. It requires the ability to link employee, client and firm-level activity, centralizing oversight in a way that reduces human error and provides auditable reporting.
StarCompliance (Star) is answering this need with the launch of Firm Trade Surveillance, the newest addition to its Enterprise suite. Built to help compliance teams monitor firm-level trading activity with greater speed and accuracy, this solution replaces manual processes with automation and smart detection.
“This solution takes the complexity out of firm trade surveillance, transforming a tedious and error prone process into an intelligent, efficient workstream. It allows firms to focus on palpable risks while automatically approving safe trades with a full audit trail of the decision rationale. By automating detection and streamlining case management, we’re giving compliance teams the tools they need to make rapid, confident risk decisions. It’s a smarter way to pinpoint potential MNPI Leakage, and a major step forward in how organizations approach surveillance.” – Kelvin Dickenson, Chief Product Officer at Star
Firm Trade Surveillance at a glance:
- Reduces false positives with configurable rules and flexible thresholds
- Leverages intelligently aggregated trade data to reveal risks not easily discerned in a purely transactional process
- Enriches trade data to streamline review process
- Leverages watch and restricted lists already housed in STAR to centralize oversight and ensure consistency
Want to see how it works?
Join us for Product Spotlight: Firm Trade Surveillance on July 22 at 11 AM EST. This virtual session will offer a detailed walkthrough of the product and show how it can help your firm stay ahead of regulatory risk.
July 22 @ 11AM EST | LIVE Webinar
Product Spotlight: Firm Trade Surveillance
Manual trade reviews are a thing of the past. Join us for a live demo of Firm Trade Surveillance, the newest innovation from StarCompliance, designed to automate risk detection and simplify firm-wide trade oversight.
