It struck me as I was reading this statement from SEC Chair Paul Atkins about the latest Reg Flex Agenda – see this recent blog about the details of that – about how the importance of that agenda has grown over the years. When I first started blogging about the agenda, I had never heard of it before – and I doubt many others had either.
The Reg Flex Agenda is published in the Federal Register as part of an overall agenda put forth by the federal agencies in the US. The date of the thing is always after-the-fact, as this latest agenda is for Spring 2025. The SEC staff never mentioned the agenda, nor did the SEC highlight it in any way on its website or otherwise.
Instead, we relied upon the public speaking engagements from those at the SEC as a way to learn of impending rulemaking projects that the SEC intended to undertake and possible timelines. Often, the timelines for those rulemakings didn’t match the predictions, in the same way that the timelines in the Reg Flex Agenda often don’t match what actually transpired.
In more recent years, coverage of what is – and isn’t – in the Reg Flex Agenda became fodder for bloggers and reporters and the SEC itself started to comment on the agenda. It still is somewhat aspirational, as what the SEC intends to do can get derailed by unforeseen circumstances and emerging new priorities. But its importance can’t be denied these days – let’s call it “aspirational+”…
Authored by
Broc Romanek