Companies that file registration statements or reports with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) must now use HTML formatting and hyperlinks in exhibits so that investors and others can find relevant information easily.

Writing this week in the Securities Law Blog , West Palm Beach attorney Laura Anthony, a securities investment specialist and founder of Legal and Compliance, LLC, points out that a new September 1 SEC rule governing filing requirements will make it unnecessary for investors to go fish for information that is mentioned but difficult to find in reports or filings.

Ms. Anthony says the new rule is an acknowledgment that many investors and market participants rely on the Internet to research companies and investment opportunities and that SEC reports and filings should provide hyperlinks to important information.

Hyperlinks will be required in all filings (including XBRL exhibits ) that are covered by the Securities Act or Exchange Act, Ms. Anthony notes. The new rule also requires the inclusion of a cumulative index of all the exhibits that appear in each filing. Non-accelerated filers and smaller reporting companies may continue submitting filings in ASCII format through September 1, 2018.

The formats refer to various coding standards that display information on the Internet. XBRL is formatting software that supports financial tagging; ASCII is a character-encoding standard for electronic communications, and it cannot support hyperlinks.

Before September 1, companies could refer to or mention exhibits in prior filings rather than re-file the exhibit with the SEC ; when doing so, they were urged to include specific references to the date and location of the original filing or exhibit, according to Ms. Anthony.

However, many companies do not do so, leaving the public to search through prior filings to find the listed exhibit, she writes. Moreover, as time goes by and companies switch counsel, some choose not to spend the time and funds to have new counsel update the exhibit list to include a full reference. The new rule will require them to do so.