The SEC Whistleblower Program’s Encouraging Beginning

I was recently interviewed on Bloomberg TV to discuss the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) new program, enacted under Dodd-Frank, and the recently released Annual Report on the Whistleblower Program. The full interview can be seen here. As I discuss in the interview, in the seven weeks since the program went live to the end of the SEC’s fiscal year, the Annual Report reported 334 whistleblower submissions. Projecting that number out over a year, that is well over 2,000 whistleblower submissions. Considering that the SEC conducts less than 2,000 investigations in any given year, the amount of submissions so far is significant. It is no surprise. The program offers large monetary awards and powerful anti-retaliation protections to whistleblowers who come forward with original information that leads to a successful enforcement action. With these powerful incentives in place, it is assured that some of the biggest SEC enforcement actions going forward will be the result of whistleblower tips.