[Photo: Rick Fleming, Head of SEC Office of the Investor Advocate]

Rick Fleming became the first head of the SEC's Office of the Investor Advocate in 2014. Prior to joining the SEC, Rick was the deputy general counsel with NASAA (North American Securities Administrators Association ).

The SEC’s Office of the Investor Advocate announced it will host an Evidence Summit to discuss strategies for raising retail investors’ understanding of key investment characteristics such as fees, risks, returns, and conflicts of interest.

The March 10 Evidence Summit will mark the official launch of the SEC’s new investor research initiative led by the SEC’s Office of the Investor Advocate, dubbed ‘POSITIER’, also known as Policy Oriented Stakeholder and Investor Testing for Innovative and Effective Regulation.

• POSITIER seeks to inform the rulemaking process with evidence obtained from surveys and specific testing projects.
• Under this initiative, the SEC’s Office of the Investor Advocate has launched a specific study program to examine the topic of Retail Disclosure Effectiveness.
• This study program seeks to identify and test interventions that increase investor awareness of key investment features and, in turn, improve investment outcomes.

The Evidence Summit will be held at the SEC’s Washington, D.C. headquarters on Friday, 3/10/17 and will be open to the public and webcast live on the SEC’s website. The agenda is available at https://www.sec.gov/page/positier.