The SEC has not yet released an official report of SEC Enforcement activity for Fiscal Year (FY) 2026, which ended September 30, 2026, but several other independent sources have released their own analyses. The numbers reflected in the independent sources’ report vary, but they are directionally consistent – they all show significantly reduced SEC enforcement activity in FY 2026, the agency’s first full year under current Chair Paul Atkins. As discussed below, reduced enforcement numbers may be interpreted in varying ways, but the lower FY2026 enforcement numbers do have important implications.
Statistical analyses of the SEC’s FY 2026 enforcement activity can be found in an October 20, 2026, report from the Brattle Group (here), and in an October 29, 2026, Law360 memo from the Covington law firm (here).
Overall Fiscal Year 2026 Enforcement Numbers
The Brattle Group’s report puts the number of FY 2026 SEC enforcement actions at 308, the lowest annual number of SEC enforcement actions since at least FY 2018, figures that the Covington law firm memo describes as “historically low enforcement numbers.” The Covington report also states that the FY 2026 numbers represent the “lowest SEC enforcement stats in over a decade.”
These annual enforcement numbers include cases involving delinquent filers and follow-on administrative proceedings on prior enforcement actions. Excluding these follow-on actions results in what the Covington law firm memo calls “stand-alone cases.” The law firm says there were 232 stand-alone enforcement actions in FY 2026, a drop from 303 stand-alone actions in FY 2025 (representing close to a 25 % year-over-year reduction), and 431 in FY 2024 (suggesting a decline between FY 2024 and FY 2026 of nearly 50%).
To be sure, SEC enforcement activity increased in the second half of FY 2026, with the agency bringing 163 actions in the second half of the fiscal year, compared to just 69 in the first half of the fiscal year. As the Covington memo notes, the higher number of enforcement actions in the second half of FY 2026 is “consistent with historical trends even as overall enforcement numbers have declined.”
Reasons for the Decline in SEC Enforcement Activity
There are a number of reasons that may explain the decline in SEC enforcement activity during FY 2026. The first is philosophical; current SEC Chair Paul Atkins has been very clear that he intends for the agency to take a different approach to enforcement than the agency has taken in the past.
In a June 2026 speech, Atkins said that he intends for the agency to cease taking a “regulation by enforcement approach” and that the agency has now “recentered our enforcement program on the Commission’s core mission by prioritizing cases that provide meaningful investor protection.” Atkins has been clear that he is not “focusing on the number of enforcement cases” but rather on “true investor protection,” with a priority on “types of misconduct that inflict the greatest harm – particularly fraud, market manipulation, and abuses of trust.”
In addition to this changed philosophical approach, there also have been several practical factors that may have contributed to the year-over-year decline in the number of enforcement actions. In a September 2026 speech, current SEC Enforcement Division Director David Woodcock noted as contributing factors to the number of FY 2026 enforcement actions, among other things, the fact that there was a roughly 20% reduction in the agency’s workforce in 2025, and that there was a 43-day government shutdown during the first quarter of the 2026 fiscal year.
Though Woodcock himself did not mention it, Enforcement Division leadership changes during the fiscal year may also have contributed, as Margaret Ryan resigned as Enforcement Director in March 2026, with Woodcock assuming that role in May 2026.
Breaking Down the Overall Numbers
While the aggregate enforcement numbers can be interpreted in a variety of ways, a breakdown of the aggregate numbers may reveal some more interesting details.
For starters, the numbers show that the SEC’s enforcement activity during FY 2026 was concentrated in a few categories. During FY 2026, 88% of the SEC enforcement activity was concentrated in just four of the nine categories into which the SEC itself normally categorizes its activity. The four categories in which the activity was concentrated are securities offerings; issuer reporting and auditing; investment advisers and investment companies; and insider trading. By contrast, activity in these four categories represented 75% of the SEC’s FY 2025 enforcement activity, and 64% in FY 2024.
Activities in the other five categories (broker-dealers, market manipulation, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, municipal securities, and other matters) declined to only 12% of FY 2026 activity, compared to 25% in FY 2025, and 36% in FY 2024.
The reduced enforcement activity in at least two of these latter five categories is particularly interesting to me. First, according to the law firm memo, the agency brought just six market manipulation cases in FY 2026, compared to 15 cases in FY 2025 and 17 cases in FY 2024. This decline in the number of market manipulation enforcement cases is interesting in and of itself, but it is even more interesting in the context of a calendar year in which there has been a proliferation of market-manipulation private civil securities lawsuits.
As The D&O Diary has detailed (most recently here), there have been at least 15 market manipulation securities class action lawsuits filed this year, representing an extraordinary breakout of very specific kinds of cases. In the context of this remarkable outbreak of market-manipulation private civil litigation, the dramatic decline in SEC market-manipulation enforcement activity arguably looks incongruent.
Another interesting statistical detail within the aggregate data has to do with Foreign Corrupt Practices-related activity. According to the law firm memo, there were no FCPA-related enforcement cases in FY 2026, compared to six in FY 2025. However, all six of the FY 2025 FCPA-related enforcement actions were initiated prior to the beginning of Atkins’s term. Thus, the law firm memo notes, “Atkins’ SEC has yet to bring a single FCPA case, and nearly 23 months have now passed since the presidential election.”
At one level, this dearth of FCPA enforcement activity is hardly surprising, as at the outset of the current Trump administration, the White House issued an Executive Order saying that in order to “advance American economic and national security by eliminating excessive barriers to American commerce abroad,” the administration is “pausing” the enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). The “pause” seems to have translated into an effective bar. I may not be the the only one who suspects that the kind of activity to which the FCPA applies likely has not discontinued, and that, in fact, in light of a clear signal about FCPA non-enforcement, FCPA-violative activity potentially could even have increased.
To be sure, the statistical breakdown of the overall FY 2026 SEC enforcement activity does reflect continued focus on other specific categories of activity. For example, enforcement actions relating to investment advisers and investment companies actually increased to 81 in FY 2026, compared to 72 in FY 2025, according to the law firm memo.
Insider trading-related enforcement activity also increased in FY 2026, from 31 enforcement actions in FY 2025 to 37 in FY 2026.
In addition, “unlawful conduct in connection with securities offerings remained a top enforcement priority” in FY 2026, according to the law firm memo. However, the number of securities offering-related enforcement actions dropped from 88 in FY 2025 to 64 in FY 2026.
The law firm memo says that the SEC’s FY 2026 enforcement record shows that while the agency has, consistent with Atkins’s approach, reduced enforcement activity in certain areas, “enforcement actions related to insider trading and securities offerings continue to occupy a significant portion of the SEC’s enforcement portfolio, indicating a significant commitment to investigating fraud.”
Discussion
As noted above, there are several reasons potentially explaining the decline in SEC enforcement activity in FY 2026. It is possible that the relative FY 2026 enforcement activity decline could reverse during the current FY. However, the fact that the decline is at least in part a reflection of a philosophical approach to securities enforcement suggests that the diminished enforcement activity levels could continue at least to a certain extent.
There arguably are several implications from the reduced SEC enforcement activity during FY 2026. The members of the securities plaintiffs’ bar will contend that reduced enforcement activity (in combination with other SEC initiatives such as the allowance of mandatory arbitration bylaws for IPO companies and the introduction of optional semiannual periodic reporting) underscore the importance of private enforcement of the securities laws to fill an apparent gap on policing corporate misconduct and protecting investors.
However, it could also be the case that diminished SEC enforcement activity could itself have a downward impact on private securities litigation activity, as historically a significant portion of securities class action lawsuit filings have in effect piggybacked on SEC enforcement actions — indeed, historically at least 20% of securities class action litigation filings have followed in the wake of SEC enforcement actions. Prior SEC enforcement activity can provide plaintiffs’ lawyers with a potential springboard through organized investigative activity and through detailed allegations the agency has built through use of its subpoena powers. In the absence of prior SEC action, private securities plaintiffs must organize their own informal investigative activity.
One specific area where I am certain the absence of SEC activity will likely have an impact is with respect to the FCPA. As this site has shown, there is a long tradition of follow-on private civil litigation following in the wake of governmental FCPA enforcement. The likelihood is that in the effective absence of FCPA enforcement action, FCPA-related private civil actions likely will cease as well.
There is a larger question about whether diminished SEC enforcement activity will have an impact on investor protection and market integrity. Proponents of the administration’s SEC enforcement approach will argue that the agency’s approach is more precisely focused on these very considerations, rather than on merely amassing enforcement statistics to create the appearance of securities law protection. Critics of the current administration will contend that reduced enforcement activity equates to diminished guardrails, leaving greater room for bad conduct. Discussion of these differing viewpoints will inevitably take on a political cast in the current environment.
The one thing I know for sure is that there is an important difference between the current administration and the prior administration when it comes to enforcement of the securities laws. Time will tell what the impact of this changed approach will be.
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