The Securities and Exchange Commission said Thursday that it has created a new Office of Risk Assessment to help provide data-driven risk assessment tools and models to support a wide range of SEC activities.
The new office, to be housed within the Division of Economic and Risk Analysis (DERA), will initially be staffed by DERA employees as the division seeks a new assistant director to head it.
Since its creation in 2009, DERA has collaborated with market experts throughout the SEC to develop risk assessment tools like the Aberrational Performance Inquiry, launched to proactively identify atypical hedge fund performance. This work led to eight enforcement actions and is one of the tools used by the Division of Enforcement to assess private funds.