Compliance officers’ concerns are the mirror opposite of what the SEC is checking for, creating governance holes for investment advisers.
This finding rises out of the 2026 Investment Management Compliance Testing Survey; a joint investigation posed by the Investment Adviser Association, ACA Group and Yuter Compliance Consulting into compliance professionals at 411 registered investment advisor firms.
In this tightly regulated space, it stands to reason that compliance teams are concerned with how their marketers advertise themselves. But AI was the maximum concern for the lion’s share of respondents at 85%: the single most dominant answer in 21 years of the survey’s history.
Advertising and marketing was only cited as the biggest issue by 19% of firms, and fourth on the lists of compliance officers’ own “ones to watch.”
Strikingly, this mindset runs in opposition to which areas the SEC is actually focusing on for their examinations. Marketing materials reign as the most-examined category in the industry (at 57%), with books and records (53%), conflicts of interest (53%) and fee calculations (48%) also prominent figures.
The fact that AI use is not as high on the SEC’s agenda as firms may think can prove to be a regulatory oversight. Especially so with the amount of advisors that will use generative AI for producing draft content for factsheets, commentaries, pitch decks, and social posts.
Only a third of those surveyed have policies to cover third-party AI usage. Another (low) 37% have adopted formal policies to test and validate GenAI outputs.
This is rocky ground given that being transparent about AI’s role when compiling marketing material is a growing compliance concern, and should not be ignored despite the SEC’s examinations ranking.
So, what does this mean for fund marketers?
Firms using AI to make content are exposed to a dual-force of scrutiny. On one hand, standard SEC Marketing Rule reviews into performance claims, testimonials, hypothetical performance, and relevant disclosures. On the other, the validation of AI outputs that are an emerging regulatory expectation.
It’s misguided to simply wait for an inevitable compliance clampdown into AI marketing to arrive like a hammer. In preparation, an advisory firm’s compliance and marketing teams should document both an AI tool inventory list, and a review and escalation process for any external-facing content produced with AI.
Treating AI-based material with as much suspicion as any unreviewed vendor copy is vital to ensuring its fairness. And to be able to show a future examiner exactly which content was approved, when, and by whom, to stay in the SEC’s good books.
Source
ACA Group, Investment Adviser Association, and Yuter Compliance Consulting, “AI Dominates Compliance Priorities at Historic Margin as Firms Move from Awareness to Action”
