New SEC fees would spare many, cost others thousands

Some firms could see nearly $30,000 in new costs, but the majority of the more than 32,000 advisors registered with the SEC and state regulators would face little or no extra expense if Congress allowed the SEC to collect user fees to fund exams, according to an analysis by RIA in a Box.

The compliance firm’s analysis notes that the Investment Adviser Examination Improvement Act of 2013, which would allow the SEC to assess a user fee on advisors, would only impact around 11,500 SEC-registered RIA firms, which means the majority of firms, which are registered with the states, “would not be impacted at all.”

The annual increased cost to RIA firms for user fee-funded examinations would be around $310 million, with an average cost per firm of $27,013, RIA in a Box estimated in a blog post, and firms would pay a higher or lower user fee based on their assets under management.

As the analysis points out, while there a number of exceptions, in general investment advisory firms with $100 million or more in assets under management register with the SEC, while firms with less than $100 million in AUM register with the relevant states.

To reach the $310 million figure, RIA in a Box assumed a three-year examination cycle and calculated the number of user-fee funded exams for 2015 to be 2,897, RIA in a Box President G.J. King told ThinkAdvisor. (The SEC performed 964 audits in 2013, and the bill only authorizes fees to fund additional exams.)