The SEC’s fiscal year ended on September 30, 2015, and the 2015 Annual Report on the Dodd-Frank Whistleblower Program was issued Monday. According to the report, the SEC saw another surge in whistleblower tips and paid out roughly $37 million to eight whistleblowers last year. The SEC reported significant increases with 3,923 tips received and 120 award claims sought after major enforcement actions. The surge in the number of tips represents an 8% increase from last year and is attributed to a rise in complaints about corporate disclosures and financials, trading and pricing issues and unregistered securities offerings. Notably, New York also saw a surge with 261 tips, up from 204 the previous year. The only areas where the SEC saw declines were in market manipulation and overseas jurisdictions such as India, which saw numbers fall to 33 tips from 69 the year prior.

Under Dodd-Frank, the SEC is required to pay whistleblowers for information that results in more than $1 million in combined sanctions. The SEC has discretion to pay between 10% and 30% of the sanctions collected from an account that is funded by enforcement sanctions. Since the inception of the program, the SEC has paid more than $52 million to 22 tipsters, and the balance of the account last fiscal year was about $400 million. The number of whistleblower tips received by the SEC has increased each year since the program was initiated. Since 2012 there has been a 30% increase in the number of tips received by the SEC.

The SEC report was issued on the same day that Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass) and Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) sent a letter to SEC Chairwoman Mary Jo White seeking information regarding the recommendations made by its inspector general to improve the response to whistleblower tips. The senators gave the SEC until December 8, 2015, to provide information relating to the number of tips that were under investigation and the percentage of tips, complaints and referrals that are handled within 30 days of receipt. While we wait for the SEC’s response, we know that the SEC is currently tracking about 700 tips and that attorneys at the whistleblower office purportedly return hotline messages within 24 business hours. The annual report also noted that the office returned 2,801 calls during fiscal year 2015.