Various news sources are saying that the US Securities and Exchange Commission is planning to increase its total of examiners who look at investment advice firms by about 100 to about 630.

The US Investment Advisor Association says that a good many of these extra hands might be going from examining (visiting and assessing) broker-dealers to examining advisors. Last year the SEC took on more than 70 new advisor examiners. If these figures are correct, they represent an increase of more than one-third in the advice sector.

The association has written: "The policy debate on how best to increase the frequency of adviser examinations has been going on for years, at various times focusing on the potential for a self-regulatory organisation (i.e., FINRA), on increasing the SEC’s funding (including having advisers pay “user fees” that are earmarked to the SEC's Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations) and, most recently, on a potential rule mandating third-party compliance reviews.

It was in a speech in October that David Grimm, the SEC's director of investment management, proposed to introduce such reviews. In his testimony to a committee of the US House of Representatives, he did not come out with a time-scale for a proposal for a rule to establish a uniform fiduciary standard of conduct for broker-dealers and investment advisors who give high-net-worth individuals and other retail customers investment advice about securities.