Reg BI Will Be Defined Case by Case, Cetera’s Chief Legal Officer Says: SEC Roundup

Welcome to SEC Roundup, a bimonthly video series by Paul Hastings partners and former Securities and Exchange Commission senior trial counsels Nick Morgan and Tom Zaccaro exploring current SEC topics with thought leaders and industry experts.

In this episode, Morgan and Zaccaro talk with Cetera Chief Legal Officer Lisa Gok, who’s a former assistant regional director in the SEC’s Los Angeles office, about the SEC’s first Regulation Best Interest enforcement action, in which the agency charged registered broker-dealer Western International Securities Inc. and five of its registered reps with violating Reg BI through risky L Bond sales.

Gok says “similar types of investigations” to the first Reg BI action are going on, and that the first action shows that the SEC “intends to enforce Reg BI however they define it, and it [Reg BI] will be continued to be defined, I think, as the cases go on.”

See the video above for the discussion with Gok.