The Securities and Exchange Commission Thursday withdrew 14 major rule proposals put forth during former SEC Chairman Gary Gensler's term — among them, the controversial outsourcing and custody rule plans for advisors.
The agency said that it is formally withdrawing certain notices of proposed rulemaking issued between March 2022 and November 2023.
The SEC "took a very indiscriminate approach and simply axed all of the major proposals" initiated while Gensler was at the agency, Amy Lynch, founder and president of FrontLine Compliance, told ThinkAdvisor Friday. "This bulk recision makes it look like the Commission did not evaluate each proposal on its merit, but rather took the red pen to anything from the old administration."
For instance, "there was little pushback on the cybersecurity proposed rule for advisers and investment companies, but it was axed along with the rest," Lynch said.
The securities regulator said that it does not intend to issue final rules with respect to the proposals, adding that if it decides to pursue future regulatory action in any of these areas, the agency will issue a new proposed rule.
What's still in play? A few rules "will be fun to watch," said Kenneth Clowers, co-head of ACA's Global Regulatory Compliance Practice, on LinkedIn.
A Treasury rule delegating anti-money laundering examination authority to the SEC has a compliance date approaching. "I believe there to have been conversations about delaying the coming compliance date but nothing has come to light yet," Clowers wrote.
A companion to that rule, the SEC's Customer Identification Program rule, "remains in a proposed state," he wrote.
House Financial Services Committee Chairman French Hill, R-Ark., told the agency on March 31 to withdraw a long list of final and proposed rules.
See the gallery for the rules the agency discarded.
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