Reg E-Delivery: Giant Leap or Baby Step?

On July 16, 2026, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) proposed new Regulation E-Delivery (“Reg E-Delivery”), a potential modernization of the default manner in which issuers, broker-dealers, investment advisers, and other market participants provide information to investors in our increasingly electronic world.  In the words of SEC Chairman Paul Atkins, “[t]oday, the Commission took an important step toward allowing the financial services industry to harness technology for the benefit of everyday American investors. By proposing to permit electronic delivery to become the default method for issuers, market intermediaries, and others to communicate with investors, we are taking another stride toward a regulatory framework suitable for the modern era, a key pillar of my agenda. In an age of artificial intelligence and blockchain technology, a default to paper delivery should be a relic, not a standard.”

Today, many regulatory disclosures pursuant to the federal securities laws are still delivered in paper, unless the recipient affirmatively opts otherwise based on the “notice, access and delivery” framework that the SEC adopted over 30 years ago and the regulated entity and, as applicable, its service providers, have the operational and practical means to effect e-delivery (particularly where there are substantial numbers of recipients). However, the benefits of electronic information delivery are numerous—e-delivery is rapid, cost-efficient, secure and provides for information to be widely delivered with ease. Investors and others can access and parse information on their phones or laptops worldwide; in fact, a 2025 survey by the SEC’s Office of the Investor Advocate “found that the vast majority of U.S investors (nearly 80%) prefer some form of e-delivery for financial disclosure documents that do not include personal information, and also that a majority (approximately 63%) prefers some form of e-delivery even for documents that do include personal information.” Artificial intelligence and blockchain technologies only serve to enhance the benefits provided by e-delivery. In light of these technological steps forward, the SEC is proposing Reg E-Delivery as a comprehensive update to its current information delivery framework.