To clients, colleagues, friends and compliance professionals:

I hope you all had a great holiday season and a chance to enjoy family and recharge for the New Year.  I believe 2017 is going to be a year of exciting change in the capital markets industry.  One thing that is constant is change.  As we struggle with unanswered regulatory questions, we have to be prepared for the unknown.  The fiduciary rule is due to be effective, and we don’t know if it will be pushed off, repealed or modified.  No matter the outcome, we need to be ready.  Our goal is to be a leader in consulting on this and other rule making initiatives as we move into the New Year.

The make-up of the Commission and the SEC staff will also be an important development with its own uncertainties.  I am hopeful that we will get some relief from the broken windows policy of the current enforcement-oriented chair.  I personally believe that the past policies, while bringing in high fines and closing many cases, may not have been the best way to protect investors in a manner that has been worth the cost.  Smaller advisory firms have been getting squeezed and, in many instances, run out of the business.  If this trend were to continue, many smaller advisers would be swallowed up because of regulatory risk and in the name of investor protection.  We anticipate that this will change under the new administration, which is likely to create a more business-friendly environment.  The pendulum appears to be swinging toward a more free-market policy focus.  Change takes time, but I believe that pending enforcement cases will be paused for reevaluation.  This should give our clients some breathing room in what has seemed like a suffocating regulatory environment.

At Hardin Compliance Consulting, it is our goal to be as prepared as we can, to deal with these exciting changes and guide our clients through the winds of change.  I am proud of what our team has accomplished over 2016 and our progress as a firm. We’ve expanded our staff, adopted a state-of-the art compliance technology platform, updated our website and provided continuing education opportunities for all employees. We’ve been fortunate in continuing to serve our many long term clients as well as having the opportunity to work with new firms and on challenging projects.

First and foremost, our strength as a firm is based on our team approach.  We will continue to focus on our collective ideas and strengths during 2017.  We expect our team members to continue to ask questions, share ideas and come together to solve problems.  In this way, we will help each other and grow individually and as a team.  If we do that minute by minute, and day by day, we will accomplish our goals, and we will look back on 2017 with same sense of achievement and excitement that we have now looking into the New Year.

I would like to thank everyone at Hardin Compliance Consulting for your attention to detail and diligent hard work in the past and into the future.  And I would like to thank our clients for their continued support.

Happy New Year!

Matt

Photo by:  Niels Noordhoek