Fighting Identity Theft at the Investor Level

The Securities and Exchange Commission is aiming to help investors avoid the perils of identity theft, something that is a surprising or less common move from the agency.  Today’s SEC news was jointly proposed with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). The SEC’s rule proposal aims to help protect investors from identity theft “by ensuring that broker-dealers, mutual funds, and other SEC-regulated entities create programs to detect and respond appropriately to red flags.”

The proposed rules are said to be substantially similar to rules adopted in 2007 by the FTC.  SEC-regulated entities would be required to adopt a written ID theft program which would identify relevant red flags and would detect the occurrence of red flags.  Two other aims would be to respond appropriately to the detected red flags and to periodically update the program.

FULL DETAILS FROM THE SEC