The SEC does not show up unannounced. Every year, the Division of Examinations publishes its examination priorities, a roadmap of exactly what it plans to scrutinize across investment advisers, broker-dealers, investment companies, and other registered entities. For fiscal year 2026, that roadmap was released on November 17, 2025, and if you work in marketing at a financial services firm, there is a lot in it that affects you directly.

This is not a document most marketing teams read. That is exactly the problem.

Why Marketing Has to Pay Attention

The SEC's exam priorities are traditionally seen as a compliance and legal concern. But several of the 2026 focus areas touch things that marketing owns: advertising claims, customer-facing materials, disclosures, AI-generated content, and social media communications. When examiners show up, they review marketing materials as part of assessing compliance program effectiveness. If what your firm says publicly does not match how it actually operates, that gap becomes an examination finding.

Chairman Paul Atkins put it plainly when the priorities dropped: "Examinations are an important component to accomplishing the agency's mission, but they should not be a 'gotcha' exercise." The message is that firms have fair warning. Which means if something surfaces during an exam, there is no claiming you did not know.

What the 2026 Priorities Actually Cover

The Division's 2026 focus spans six types of market participants and four cross-cutting risk areas. The four cross-cutting risk areas that apply broadly across firm types are:

• Cybersecurity and operational resiliency, including compliance with the 2024 amendments to Regulation S-P

• Emerging financial technology, specifically the use of AI, robo-advisers, and algorithmic tools

• Regulation SCI, covering incident response and vendor risk management for certain market infrastructure entities

• Anti-money laundering and sanctions compliance programs

Here is what matters most for compliance-conscious marketing teams.

Marketing, Advertising, and Compliance Program Effectiveness

For investment advisers, the effectiveness of compliance programs is one of the primary exam areas. And within that, marketing is explicitly named. Examiners will review advertising and marketing practices, including whether materials are accurate, whether claims are substantiated, and whether disclosures around fees and conflicts of interest are adequately reflected in what firms communicate publicly.

This is where the SEC's 2022 Marketing Rule continues to matter. Firms that include performance data, testimonials, or third-party ratings in their marketing need documented processes to ensure those claims hold up. During an exam, staff will typically look at the firm's annual compliance review to see whether it is substantive and whether it produced real improvements. A review that exists primarily to check a box will not satisfy examiners.

For broker-dealers, Regulation Best Interest remains a priority. Examiners will assess whether recommendations made to retail clients, including investment strategies communicated through marketing, genuinely reflect the client's best interest and whether conflicts of interest are properly disclosed.

AI-Driven Claims Are Getting Scrutinized

The 2026 priorities signal that the SEC is paying close attention to how firms are using artificial intelligence in their businesses, and that scrutiny extends to how they talk about it. Emerging financial technology is listed as one of the four critical risk areas for the year.

Examiners will review automated investment tools, robo-advisers, AI-driven analytics, and trading algorithms. The specific concern is whether claims firms make about their technology are accurate and whether oversight and controls are actually in place. If a firm markets itself as using AI for better client outcomes, the SEC wants to see that the AI does what the firm says it does and that there is human oversight of those systems.

This matters for fintech and wealth management firms especially. Marketing language around AI capabilities needs to be defensible. Overstating what a tool does, even unintentionally, can create liability under both securities laws and general advertising standards.

Cybersecurity and Data Disclosures

The 2026 priorities significantly elevate cybersecurity, citing escalating threats including AI-driven attacks and new forms of malware. But there is a more direct marketing angle here: the amended Regulation S-P.

The 2024 amendments to Regulation S-P require firms to establish written incident response programs and notify customers when their data has been breached. Examiners will review whether firms have implemented these requirements, including whether customer-facing communications about data handling and privacy policies accurately reflect what firms actually do.

If your firm's website or marketing materials make claims about data security, those claims need to match your actual security posture and documented policies.

Disclosures and Conflicts of Interest

Across nearly every market participant category, the 2026 priorities return to the same theme: disclosures must be accurate, and they must reflect reality. For investment advisers, this means fee disclosures, conflict of interest disclosures, and statements about investment strategies must be consistent across Form ADV, marketing materials, websites, and any other client-facing content.

Kroll's compliance experts, in their analysis of the priorities, specifically flagged that firms should ensure their "clients and public facing documentation such as Form ADV, websites, social media, marketing materials, due diligence questionnaires, fund offering documents and regulatory filings are consistent." Inconsistency between any of these is a red flag during exams.

The Quiet Shift Worth Noting

One notable absence in the 2026 priorities: cryptocurrency and digital assets no longer appear as a standalone examination area. Under previous leadership, crypto was a named priority. That is gone in 2026, likely reflecting both the change in SEC leadership under Chair Atkins and pending federal legislative efforts in the space. Firms in the digital assets space should not read this as reduced risk, but it does represent a shift in tone.

Private fund advisers also lost their dedicated section. That does not mean private fund compliance is off the table. The SEC has woven those concerns into the broader investment adviser priorities instead.

What This Means If You Are in Financial Marketing

The practical takeaway is straightforward. If your firm is registered with the SEC, or if you work with registered entities as a vendor or agency, marketing materials are fair game during an examination. The standard the SEC applies is whether what you say matches what you do, and whether marketing has meaningful oversight from compliance. A few things worth auditing now:

• Review all public-facing materials, including your website, social media, and pitch decks, for consistency with your Form ADV and any regulatory filings

• Document your compliance review process for marketing content, especially anything involving performance claims, AI capabilities, or data security language

• Ensure your privacy and data handling disclosures reflect your actual practices, not aspirational ones

• If you have recently launched new products, merged with another firm, or expanded into new investment strategies, update your marketing materials to reflect the current state of your business

The 2026 exam cycle is already underway. The firms that treat these priorities as a checklist will be better prepared than those that treat them as someone else's problem.