After Running S.E.C., Schapiro Becomes Bank Consultant

After more than three decades of policing Wall Street, Mary L. Schapiro is going to work for some if its biggest players.

The Promontory Financial Group, a consulting firm that steers banks and other financial firms through regulatory scrutiny, announced on Tuesday that it had hired Ms. Schapiro as chairwoman of its governance and markets practice. The move follows a grueling four-year period for Ms. Schapiro, who ran the Securities and Exchange Commission in the wake of the financial crisis.

“Mary is an outstanding advocate for investors and was a strong and decisive regulator during one of the most volatile periods in our financial history,” Eugene A. Ludwig, the head of Promontory, said in a statement.

Ms. Schapiro is the latest regulator to step through Washington’s revolving door on her way to Promontory. In addition to its ties with the S.E.C., Promontory has a deep bench of employees from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Mr. Ludwig created Promontory in 2001 after a stint as Comptroller under President Clinton.

Ms. Schapiro’s arrival comes at a difficult time for Promontory, which recently took a beating for its role in a botched review of foreclosures. Under orders from the Comptroller’s office, the nation’s biggest banks had hired consultants like Promontory to determine whether homeowners were wrongfully evicted.

But delays and inefficiencies plagued the consultants, which collected about $2 billion in fees over 14 months. Promontory, the firm examining loans for Wells Fargo, Bank of America and PNC, was blamed for relying on contract employees and low-balling the amount of harm homeowners suffered. The Comptroller’s office, fed up with the delays, scuttled the review in January and negotiated a multi-billion dollar settlement deal directly with the banks.

“From Day 1, Promontory strove to conduct its review work as thoroughly and independently as possible,” a spokesman for the firm, Christopher Winans, said in a previous statement. “Our overarching concern at all times was to serve the best interests of borrowers.”

The arrival of Ms. Schapiro could help Promontory deflect the mounting scrutiny. She might also bolster its corporate governance practice, which advises public companies on managing risk.

“The risk environment for firms in today’s global markets is increasingly complex,” Ms. Schapiro said in the statement

It is unclear how much Ms. Schapiro will earn at Promontory, but the job will certainly pay her more than the S.E.C, where she made $165,000 annually. Ms. Schapiro will also pick up a healthy payday as she joins corporate boards. Last month, General Electric nominated her to join its board, a spot that should pay about $250,000.

And then there’s her payday from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Wall Street’s self-regulatory group. In 2008, Ms. Schapiro left Finra with a $7 million-plus payout that included pension and deferred compensation.

Until now, Ms. Schapiro was a lifelong regulator. Joining the government straight out of law school, she started as a trial lawyer for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, an agency she later ran under President Bill Clinton. She ultimately ran Finra, before she took the reins of the S.E.C. in 2009, when the agency was being widely condemned after it failed to thwart the financial crisis and spot Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.