The top cop on the mutual fund industry beat says he sees technology, demographics, and inudstry growth shaking up the asset management industry.

William A. Birdthistle U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Director of the Division of Investment Management

Yesterday morning, at the Investment Company Institute's Investment Management Conference (ICI IMC) in Palm Desert, California, William Birdthistle, who took over less than two years ago as director of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's division of investment management, delivered a keynote address outlining those trends and how the regulatory agency is addressing them.

Instead of focusing on possible future areas of regulatory action, Birdthistle used the three trends mentioned above as a way to discuss issue that his division at the SEC is currently addressing, or recently has addressed, through regulation.

Thus, Birdthistle's remarks offer some insights into the logic and backstory behind some recent SEC actions, including: new rules (proposed last year) to funds' and fund firms' cybersecurity risks; new rule amendments (proposed earlier this month) about fund firms' and funds' policies and procedures around protecting customer data; amendments (proposed last month) to the investment advisor custody rule; amendments (adopted in October 2022) to funds' annual and semi-annual shareholder reports; the amendments (proposed in May 2022) to the fund names rule; and the new rules (proposed in November 2022) around outsourcing arrangements. 

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