2023-12850. Submission for OMB Review; Comment Request: Extension: “Investor Form”

Upon Written Request Copies Available From: Securities and Exchange Commission, Office of FOIA Services, 100 F Street NE, Washington, DC 20549–2736

Notice is hereby given that, pursuant to the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (44 U.S.C. 3501 et seq.), the Securities and Exchange Commission (“Commission”) has submitted to the Office of Management and Budget (“OMB”) a request to approve the collection of information discussed below.

Each year the Commission receives several thousand contacts from investors who have complaints or questions on a wide range of investment-related issues. To make it easier for the public to contact the agency electronically, the Commission's Office of Investor Education and Advocacy (“OIEA”) created an electronic form (the Investor Form) that provides drop down options to choose from in order to categorize the investor's complaint or question, and may also provide the investor with automated information about their issue. The Investor Form asks investors to provide information concerning, among other things, their names, how they can be reached, the names of the individuals or entities involved, the nature of their complaint or tip, what documents they can provide, and what, if any, actions they have taken. Use of the Investor Form is voluntary. Absent the forms, the public still has several ways to contact the agency, including telephone, facsimile, letters, and email. Investors can access the Investor Form through the consolidated Investor Complaint and Question web page.

The dual purpose of the Investor Form is to make it easier for the public to contact the agency with complaints, questions, tips, or other feedback and to streamline the workflow of Commission staff that record, process, and respond to investor contacts. Investors who submit complaints, ask questions, or provide tips do so voluntarily. Although the Investor Form provides a structured format for incoming investor correspondence, the Commission does not require that investors use any particular form or format when contacting the agency. Investors who choose not to use the Investor Form will receive the same level of service as those who do.

OIEA receives approximately 30,000 contacts each year through the Investor Form. Investors who choose not to use the Investor Form receive the same level of service as those who do. The Commission uses the information that investors supply on the Investor Form to review and process the contact (which may, in turn, involve responding to questions, processing complaints, or, as appropriate, initiating enforcement investigations), to maintain a record of contacts, to track the volume of investor complaints, and to analyze trends.

The staff of the Commission estimates that the total reporting burden for using the Investor Form is 7,500 hours. The calculation of this estimate depends on the number of investors who use the forms each year and the estimated time it takes to complete the forms: 30,000 respondents × 15 minutes = 7,500 burden hours.

Members of the public should be aware that an agency may not conduct or sponsor, and a person is not required to respond to, a collection of information unless a currently valid OMB control number is displayed. Background documentation for this information collection may be viewed at the following link, http://www.reginfo.gov. Written comments and recommendations for the proposed information collection should be sent within 30 days of publication of this notice by July 17, 2023 to (i) > [e-mail] < and (ii) David Bottom, Director/Chief Information Officer, Securities and Exchange Commission, c/o John Pezzullo, 100 F Street NE, Washington, DC 20549, or by sending an email to: [e-mail].

Dated: June 12, 2023.

Sherry R. Haywood,

Assistant Secretary.