U.S. government oversight body, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) says that its latest audit of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) found continued weaknesses in the regulator’s internal controls over financial reporting.
The GAO reports that its audit of the SEC’s financial statements for fiscal 2013 uncovered several deficiencies in the commission’s internal control over financial reporting. While the shortcomings are not considered to be material weaknesses, or significant deficiencies, the GAO says that they still require SEC management’s attention.
The deficiencies related to the SEC’s procedures for transferring funds received via disgorgement and penalties to the U.S. Treasury; monitoring disgorgement and penalty related cases that are filed in courts;segregation of duties for recording disgorgement and penalty-related financial data; among other things, it says.
To correct these issues, the GAO is making nine recommendations, which it says will help improve internal control over financial reporting at the SEC. Additionally, the GAO says that its follow-up on the status of previous recommendations in this area found that the SEC has fully addressed 24 of 40 prior recommendations. With the 16 previous recommendations and the nine new ones, the SEC now has 25 recommendations that need to be addressed, it says.
“In commenting on a draft of this report, SEC acknowledged that the report contained a number of helpful recommendations to strengthen SEC’s internal controls over financial reporting,” the GAO says. “Further, the SEC chair stated that SEC is working to address the recommendations contained in the report and that SEC remains committed to investing the time and resources to maintain strong and sustainable internal control over financial reporting.”