NEW YORK — Tougher enforcement by the Securities and Exchange Commission is among major factors expected to increase liability exposures for company directors and officers.

During the Professional Liability Underwriting Society's annual D&O Symposium last week, speakers discussed litigation threats that are increasing directors' and officers' potential to be sued. If confirmed, Mary Jo White, President Obama's recent nominee to head the SEC, was mentioned as another threat.

Paul Ferrillo, litigation counsel at law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges L.L.P. in New York, said he anticipates a “little bit more of an aggressive approach” by the SEC under Ms. White, whom he described as “very even-handed, very fair.”

However, Ms. White would be “hamstrung by budgetary concerns” as SEC chief, he said.

Judges who review proposed SEC settlements or consent decrees have to determine “what's fair, adequate or reasonable,” said U.S. District Court Judge Jed S. Rakoff, who in 2011 rejected the SEC's $285 million settlement with Citigroup Inc. over its mortgage practices as “pocket change.”

“The tension is how much independent review that enables a judge to exercise,” Judge Rakoff said.

“The SEC has a long, long history of regarding all settlements as an opportunity for a victory parade” as part of its effort to get funding, said John C. Coffee, a law professor at Columbia university Law School in New York. There is a question, though, whether the SEC settlements have been victories or defeats, he said.

David Siegel, a partner with Irell & Manella L.L.P. in Los Angeles, said there is confusion as to whether the SEC “is supposed to be about collecting money.” It should be a regulatory agency “and stop wrongdoing when they see it. When they try to collect money, they do a bad job of it, and it puts courts in a position of having to apply rules as to whether the monetary settlement is just.”

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Samuel Rudman, a partner with plaintiff law firm Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd L.L.P. in New York, said the SEC would say its job is “to collect money, but not rely on the plaintiff bar.”

While the agency has increased penalties only recently, “My problem with SEC settlements is they conduct extensive discovery over a multiyear period and then refuse to make any of that information public,” Mr. Rudman said. “What the process needs is transparency.”

Mr. Siegel said he anticipates more cases in connection with the LIBOR rate-setting scandal and whistle-blower provisions of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

“Clearly,” Mr. Coffee said, there also is “great enthusiasm for insider trading cases” at the SEC.

“Whatever the trends are, (they're) going to result in higher premiums for D&O” insurance, said plaintiff attorney Max W. Berger, senior partner at Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann L.L.P. in New York.

There are three “powder keg situations” with respect to private-sector D&O litigation, said David J. Hensler, a partner with Hogan Lovells U.S. L.L.P. in Washington. They are a dominant shareholder taking advantage of his or her position over a minority shareholder, dissent among family members in family-owned businesses and bankruptcy.

One area of contention for nonprofits has been donors who have been “absolutely acting like investors,” said Beth Goldberg, a New York-based senior vice president and head of middle market for Zurich in North America.

As an example, she cited last year's $1 million jury verdict awarded to country singer and donor Garth Brooks, after a hospital failed to name a women's medical center in honor of his mother.

Peter Herron, vice president and head of the private and nonprofit liability business unit for Travelers Bond & Financial Products, a division of Travelers Cos. Inc. in Hartford, Conn., said inappropriate investments and the comingling of funds are other litigation threats facing nonprofits.

About 1,200 people attended this year's PLUS D&O Symposium. Next year's meeting will be held Jan. 28-29, 2014, in New York.