Trusted Professional

SEC Proposes Requiring Hyperlinks in Filings

Link has proposed so meone seeking t o retrieve and access an exhibit that has been  incorporated by reference must review the exhibit index to determine the filing in which the  exhibit is included, and then must search through the registrant’s filings to locate the relevant  filing to review for the particular exhibit."

The SEC said that this process can be time consuming and cumbersome. The SEC believes that requiring registrants to include hyperlinks from the exhibit index to the actual exhibits would facilitate easier access for investors and other users. Registrants cannot currently do so because of rules that prohibit linking to sites, locations or documents that go outside the commission's EDGAR system. 
Form ABS-EE because the form is used solely to facilitate the filing of tagged data and related information that must be filed as exhibits to the form, according to the SEC. Because the current ASCII system does not allow links, this means that all affected forms would have to be written, instead, in HTML. 

Comments are being taken on the proposal for the next 45 days.