SIFMA today issued the following statement from president and CEO Kenneth E. Bentsen, Jr. on the exemption from the requirement to report certain personally identifiable information to the Consolidated Audit Trail which was provided today by the Securities and Exchange Commission:
“SIFMA applauds the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for taking this appropriate action to exempt the reporting of American investors’ personally identifiable information (PII) to the Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT). For a decade, SIFMA has expressed strong concerns on behalf of the industry and investors that the information in the CAT—the largest database of retail and institutional trading ever created—was a ripe target for cyber criminals and collecting PII put investors’ data at risk. We have repeatedly called on the SEC to prohibit the collection of investors’ personal information and proposed alternatives that address the Commission’s enforcement concerns without the need to collect such data. This bold decision by the Commission is entirely appropriate and long overdue.”
