SEC commissioners criticize order against transfer agent DST

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) two Republican commissioners dissented from an agency order against a Massachusetts-based transfer agent they deemed to be an example of regulation by enforcement.

DST Asset Manager Solutions was fined $500,000 as part of its settlement with the SEC announced Thursday, but Commissioners Hester Peirce and Mark Uyeda took issue with another undertaking: a requirement that DST “[r]equest that its mutual fund clients periodically send out notifications to their client shareholder base informing them of the risk of escheatment and educating them on steps to take to avoid dormancy, including updating their addresses and otherwise establishing contact with the funds or DST.”

The commissioners, in a dissenting statement, described the requirement as “an undertaking that effectively imposes a substantive new disclosure requirement on mutual funds.”