(HedgeCo.Net) The Securities and Exchange Commission has voted to adopt rule and form amendments to make it easier for investors and other market participants to find and access exhibits in registration statements and periodic reports that were originally provided in previous filings. The amendments will require issuers to include a hyperlink to each exhibit in the filing’s exhibit index. Currently, someone seeking to 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.

“As the SEC looks for new ways to modernize financial disclosures, one of the easiest things we can do is add hyperlinks that automatically direct users to additional information on our EDGAR system,” said SEC Acting Chairman Michael Piwowar. “We are so accustomed to clicking hyperlinks on basically every website we visit, this commonsense solution will make life simpler for a lot of people.”

The final rules will take effect on September 1, 2017.