The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)’s whistleblower awards for the 2025 fiscal year demonstrate an alarming drop in whistleblower compensation, as demonstrated by the award orders published by the SEC.
Aside from 122 denials and six orders omitting award amounts, award orders for fiscal year (FY) 2025 total $59.7 million. This figure averages to around $2 million per award.
The 2025 report stands in stark contrast to (FY) 2024 and (FY) 2023, which had totals of $255 million and $600 million, respectively. The SEC’s whistleblower program has not seen such a low level of awards since 2017 under the Obama administration.
Section 21F in the Dodd-Frank Act authorizes the Commission to grant monetary awards to whistleblowers where the sanction exceeds $1,000,000. Since its inception in 2012, the SEC Whistleblower Program has awarded $2 billion to whistleblowers, with $1.8 billion accrued from the years 2020 to 2024. The SEC’s performance in 2025, however, undermines this upward trend, raising questions about the health of a program praised by prior Chairs of the SEC, including Chairman Jay Clayton, President Trump’s first Chair, and former U.S. Attorney and SEC Chair Mary Jo White.
In 2020, when the SEC granted $175 million in awards, Jay Clayton described the program in glowing terms: “Over the past ten years, the whistleblower program has been a critical component of the Commission’s efforts to detect wrongdoing and protect investors and the marketplace,...
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