That may sound like a reasonable compromise. But it changes who must act — and who pays the price for failing to do so.

Under the present system, investors who prefer electronic delivery can choose it. Under the proposed system, investors who rely on paper must recognize the notices, understand their significance, and complete whatever process is required to preserve the delivery method they already use.

The SEC is not eliminating friction. It is transferring friction from financial institutions to individual investors.

That burden will not fall evenly. People of different generations have developed different systems for receiving, reviewing, and retaining consequential financial information. For many younger investors, an emailed document or online portal is the natural archive. For many older people, the paper file is the archive.

The numbers bear this out. Older people have moved online in large numbers, but many remain wary of doing consequential business there. Pew Research Center has found that roughly one-third of older internet users have little or no confidence in their ability to perform online tasks, and nearly half say they need someone else to set up or explain a new device. Researchers studying paper versus web questionnaires have reached a parallel conclusion: Most older adults still lean toward paper, and those who rely on it are markedly more likely to drop out when the paper option disappears. That is precisely the behavior a paper-to-digital default would trigger.

A paper statement sitting on the kitchen table remains visible until someone deals with it. It can be annotated, compared with an earlier statement, placed in a tax file, or handed to a spouse, adult child, accountant, or financial adviser. For these investors, paper is not nostalgia. It is part of an established financial recordkeeping system.

An electronic notice can disappear into a spam folder, an overcrowded inbox, or an email account the investor no longer regularly checks. It may direct the recipient to a portal whose password has been forgotten or require several steps to locate a document that once arrived automatically.

Electronic availability is not the same as effective receipt.

The proposal also risks aggravating a cybersecurity problem that regulators and financial institutions have spent years teaching consumers to avoid. Under the rule, documents containing personal financial information would not arrive by email at all — instead, investors would receive a notice directing them to log into a website to retrieve the material. Yet that is the very pattern consumers are warned to distrust. The Federal Trade Commission tells people that legitimate companies won’t send a link asking you to update account information and to avoid clicking links in unexpected messages. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation give the same instructions. An electronic delivery system built around “sign in to retrieve your document” emails would normalize the exact behavior a decade of anti-fraud education has tried to stamp out.

None of this means electronic delivery should be discouraged. Investors who prefer it should have fast, reliable, and accessible electronic options. Digital disclosure can reduce costs, accelerate delivery, and make information easier to search. But expanding one option does not require placing another behind an administrative barrier.

The proper default depends on what affirmative consent is being used to accomplish.

Requiring someone to opt into an additional service can protect individual choice. TSA PreCheck, for example, allows travelers to provide additional information voluntarily in exchange for expedited screening. Someone who declines remains free to use ordinary airport screening.

Affirmative consent is also appropriate before a company makes a secondary use of sensitive consumer information. In that setting, inaction protects the individual’s existing position.

The SEC proposal works in the opposite direction. Inaction would change the investor’s existing position. Someone who has received paper documents for decades could lose them unless he successfully acts to preserve the status quo.

That is especially troubling because the principal economic benefit would accrue to the institutions relieved of printing and postage costs, while the risk of missed information would be borne by investors. The SEC’s own announcement frames the savings in paper, printing, and postage as flowing to issuers and market intermediaries. Financial institutions may save money when a disclosure is posted online, but an investor can suffer real consequences if that disclosure is overlooked.

Meaningful choice requires more than allowing people to reverse a decision made for them. It requires defaults that account for how people actually behave, including the predictable reality that some recipients will overlook notices, postpone responding, or misunderstand what will happen if they do nothing.

The SEC should preserve paper delivery for investors currently receiving it while making electronic delivery easy for everyone who affirmatively chooses it. Alternatively, firms could ask investors to select their preferred delivery method during ordinary account interactions, without penalizing those who select paper or repeatedly forcing them to reconsider that choice.

The comment window is open until Sept. 21, and anyone with a view on how these documents should reach investors can weigh in.

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Modernization should expand options, not revoke an existing option unless an investor successfully asks to keep it.

The SEC should not make older people navigate a new process merely to continue receiving the financial records on which they have relied for years. Investor protection begins by respecting investors’ choices — including the choice to keep receiving paper.

Andrew Langer is Spokesperson for Americans for Paper Access.