As the year draws to a close, Chief Compliance Officers face a familiar challenge: balancing daily oversight with strategic year-end reviews. A structured year-end compliance checklist helps firms stay audit-ready, reduce risk exposure, and strengthen operational integrity going into 2026.
With the SEC’s continued focus on governance, automation, and data oversight, this is the time to ensure your compliance program reflects both current realities and future expectations.
1. Rule Inventory and Naming Conventions
Inconsistent rule naming is one of the most common — and preventable — sources of inefficiency within compliance programs. When rules aren’t clearly labeled, teams lose visibility into intent, coverage, and testing logic.
Ask yourself:
- Are rule titles and descriptions standardized across systems (Aladdin, CRD, Charles River, etc.)?
- Do your rules clearly describe their purpose and ownership?
- Have inactive, redundant, or legacy rules been deactivated or renamed?
Performing a rule inventory audit ensures your systems remain streamlined and transparent. Review our related resource, The Hidden Cost of Poor Rule Naming, for practical guidance on naming standards and cross-platform alignment.
✅ Pro tip: Link each rule to a control test or compliance risk category to strengthen traceability for both internal and external audits.
2. Personal Trading and Employee Conduct Reviews
Employee trading remains a leading focus area in SEC examinations — and an ongoing challenge for firms managing multiple data sources.
Before year-end, review:
- Trade pre-clearance and approvals: Are workflows and escalations functioning as intended?
- Broker feed completeness: Are all employee accounts properly linked?
- Annual certifications: Are attestations complete and stored with timestamps for audit reference?
According to SEC enforcement data, deficiencies in personal trading programs continue to drive fines and remediation. Automating pre-clearance and exception management can reduce manual oversight while maintaining data integrity.
3. Policy and Procedure Updates
Policies should evolve alongside your business, not lag behind it. Outdated procedures expose firms to operational and reputational risk.
Conduct a policy health check to confirm:
- WSPs align with your current operating model and technology stack
- Roles and escalation paths reflect 2025 org changes
- New systems (AI, workflow automation, or data analytics tools) are reflected in written procedures
Ensure your documentation connects to actual control testing results — not just stated intent. For guidance on maintaining a version-controlled and audit-ready compliance library, visit TillieStar’s Compliance Documentation Playbook.
4. Data Integrity and System Validation
With automation expanding across compliance platforms, data validation is no longer optional — it’s essential.
Firms should review:
- Accuracy and completeness of data sources and feeds
- Exception logs and error-handling processes
- Vendor integrations and system permission structures
A quarterly validation cycle reduces the heavy lift at year-end and helps ensure no alert gaps or false positives occur. Documenting these checks also strengthens your SOC and cybersecurity posture, aligning compliance with enterprise risk management.
5. Risk Assessment and Regulatory Horizon Scanning
Year-end is the time to step back and assess your program from a macro perspective. A forward-looking risk review identifies where your firm is most exposed — and where you can build resilience.
Use these prompts to guide your discussion:
- Have your top compliance risks shifted in the past year (digital assets, vendor oversight, data privacy)?
- How do your current controls map to SEC and FINRA priorities for 2026?
- Are you leveraging your compliance data for predictive insights or board reporting?
Integrate these findings into your 2026 compliance roadmap to align strategy, staffing, and technology priorities.
Conclusion
A well-executed year-end compliance checklist does more than close the books — it future-proofs your compliance program for the year ahead.
Firms that combine disciplined review with forward-looking strategy enter 2026 with stronger governance, cleaner data, and greater confidence.
👉 Explore how TillieStar helps firms standardize, automate, and scale their compliance operations.
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