Auditing and monitoring are among the Securities and Exchange Commission's leading compliance directives, according to Anthony Turner, principal at Financial Tracking. Financial Tracking is a compliance software provider.

"How many 'I don't knows' do you have every day in your firms?" Turner said in a webinar. "Do you know if investment advisor accounts are staying within guidelines, either because of trading activity or market risk or market depreciation or maybe a corporate action that could change the facts and circumstances and the characteristics of a portfolio?"

Financial institutions, such as credit unions, that use manual procedures and spreadsheets to track compliance are at greater risk of regulatory action, Turner said. Larger organizations that use a sample set of their client accounts to test for compliance may need to break the sample into subgroups, especially if they employ multiple models and strategies for consumers.