Expect an electronic delivery rule proposal from the Securities and Exchange Commission soon, the agency's chairman, Paul Atkins, said Monday.
Speaking during a question and answer session Monday at the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association's Compliance & Legal Annual Seminar, held in Orlando, Atkins said an e-delivery rule is "long overdue. It makes a lot of sense; people don't read this stuff" like mutual fund prospectuses and 10-K filings. "These things wind up in the garbage can."
Atkins added: "For those who want to have it in paper form, they can opt into it. But I've seen warehouses stocked full of these things that have to be sent out by large mutual funds and others and it's a lot of paper ... plus postage and everything else."
Updated SEC rules dealing with e-delivery and communications "are long overdue," Saima Ahmed, SIFMA's general counsel, said Monday morning at the event. "Most customers communicate with their financial professional electronically, yet regulatory frameworks often assume paper-first delivery models that increase costs and operational risk without improving investor engagement. Modernizing e-delivery rules would enhance investor access to their account information, be more efficient and afford greater security for investor accounts."
Speaking Thursday at the SEC Speaks conference in Washington, Atkins said the agency is applying an "advance – A, clarify – C, transform – T," or ACT, strategy to its rulebook and regulatory frameworks.
For this year and next, Atkins said his goal "is to transform our rulebook by trimming immaterial requirements that burden the market without a corresponding benefit to investors."
Said Atkins: "Every initiative toward which the SEC is working — every rule that we propose, every interpretation that we release, and every institutional reform that we undertake — largely falls into one of three categories: Those that advance our rules to align with how markets operate today. Those that clarify our regulatory regime to streamline oversight and unlock innovation. And those that transform our requirements by eliminating both the burdensome and the impractical."
Credit: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM
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