Rollovers, Revenue Sharing Could Be in Examiners' Sights: SEC's Peirce

"It's important for compliance programs to be in place so to make sure that not only are the procedures there but that people are actually, in their day-to-day interactions with investors, that they're following through on those things," Peirce said.

Disclosure "is very important," Peirce continued. "We've already seen that's a focus at the agency, in enforcement actions we've seen that, and … I'm not a fan in providing regulatory clarity through enforcement actions, but I think people should draw from that."

When asked how the agency will handle coordination with competing advice standards put forth by the Labor Department, National Association of Insurance Commissioners and the states, and whether she sees potential harmonization around those standards, Peirce said: "I think it is important to have consistency; it's important for investors that there be consistency. … One could think about federal preemption as a possibility to have uniformity."

But, Peirce added, "I think realistically this [best-interest] standard is going to play out in enforcement and examinations, and so I suspect that there will be close coordination with FINRA, with state regulators on those fronts as well. We have a very complicated financial regulatory structure in the United States and so there's an advantage to that, but this is also an area where there can be challenges because if we're not all tracking it can be quite difficult."