WASHINGTON, D.C. –  September 23, 2026 (KOREWIRE) – The Crowdfunding Professional Association (CfPA) has adopted Presumptive Parity as the 20th plank in its policy platform, with the support of the CfPA’s Board of Directors.

The idea is straightforward. America’s exempt offering pathways do not operate in isolation. They are interconnected. When the SEC builds a new one, it shifts the standing of the ones already there. The plank asks the Commission to deliberately compare exemptions, and to explain any differences, to avoid a disjointed patchwork of regulations.

Specifically: when the SEC creates or materially changes an exempt capital-raising pathway, it should compare that pathway against similarly situated existing ones. Comparable capital raising opportunities and comparable regulatory burdens should be the starting point, unless a meaningful difference in one pathway justifies treating them differently. The burden of identifying that difference falls on whoever is defending it. Novelty alone does not count. And where no justification exists, the Commission should move toward parity as far as its authority allows.

The Commission has called this a patchwork before. In November 2020, when the SEC adopted amendments harmonizing the exempt offering framework, its own announcement carried the word in the headline: “SEC Harmonizes and Improves ‘Patchwork’ Exempt Offering Framework.” Then-Chairman Jay Clayton observed that each component of that patchwork “makes some sense in isolation,” while adding that collectively there was substantial room for improvement.

That effort was a genuine improvement. However, harmonization requires ongoing cleanup. It comes after disparities have accumulated, periodically, once the seams of a patchwork have pulled apart.

Presumptive Parity is the prospective version of the same instinct. Rather than letting gaps build until the next harmonization project, it asks the Commission to make the comparison at the moment a pathway is created or changed.

“The SEC recognized this problem in 2020 and took meaningful steps to address it,” said Brian Belley, President of the Crowdfunding Professional Association. “We’re asking the Commission to compare pathways whenever it creates or changes one. Different rules should have a clear justification. It’s easier to get that right from the start than to come back years later and harmonize the system.”

The principle runs both ways. If a new pathway comes with lighter conditions and nothing meaningful explains the gap, the answer may be to modernize the older pathway. The Commission has done exactly that before: in that same 2020 rulemaking it raised the Regulation Crowdfunding limit from roughly $1.07 million to $5 million, and the Regulation A Tier 2 limit from $50 million to $75 million.

But if a new pathway serves the same retail investors while leaving out protections Congress wrote into the statute — for example, the intermediary, investor limits and resale conditions in Sections 4(a)(6) and 4A of the Securities Act — the answer may be to ask whether comparable safeguards belong in the new pathway too.

The association does not presume either answer. It asks that the comparison happen, and that the reasoning be visible to the public.

Why it matters beyond any single exemption. Government writes the rules, but private actors spend years and substantial capital turning them into working markets. Around the Regulated Investment Crowdfunding exemptions — Regulation Crowdfunding, Regulation D and Regulation A — funding portals, broker-dealers, technology and compliance providers, accountants, attorneys, issuers and investors have built infrastructure and expertise over more than a decade. That investment is what converts an exemption on paper into a functioning market.

Those commitments are long-horizon bets on regulatory stability. When a new pathway arrives on materially different terms and no one explains why, the risk is not only that an existing framework loses ground. It is that firms discount the value of building on any framework at all. The cost falls on the market infrastructure that never gets built.

Presumptive Parity is a source of certainty for the exemptions already in place. It does not promise that today’s rules will be tomorrow’s rules. It promises something narrower and more useful: that when the Commission changes one part of an interconnected system, it will look at the consequences elsewhere, and that unexplained disparities will not be allowed to persist simply because no one went back to examine them.

That kind of predictability is itself a competitive advantage. America’s capital markets compete globally not only on scale, liquidity and innovation, but on the credibility of the system that governs them. Presumptive Parity gives investors a principle to build on and the public a methodology it can trust, including  for new innovative technologies it may not yet fully understand.

No new legislation required. The plank is addressed to the SEC’s use of its own authority. The Commission could adopt this comparison as a matter of practice tomorrow. Where a statute genuinely blocks parity, CfPA’s position is that the fix is legislative rather than leaving the gap unexamined.

A complete comparison. The plank asks the Commission to look at every material attribute of a new pathway, not only the handful it has tabulated in the past: eligible securities and non-securities, offering limits, intermediary requirements, financial disclosures and the level of assurance behind them, investor limits, resale restrictions, ongoing reporting/updates, disclosure content and how it reaches investors, issuer eligibility, and state preemption.

CfPA’s SEC Liaison and Affairs Subcommittee is preparing comments on the SEC’s proposed Regulation Crypto Assets, due October 20, 2026 — the opening day of the association’s Annual Summit in Washington, D.C.

About the Crowdfunding Professional Association

The Crowdfunding Professional Association (CfPA) is a 501(c)(6) nonprofit trade association dedicated to fostering the growth of the regulated investment crowdfunding economy. CfPA supports issuers, investors, regulated intermediaries, and crowdfunding professionals through education, advocacy, industry engagement, and policy work. CfPA advocates for responsible growth of regulated investment crowdfunding, including Regulation Crowdfunding, Regulation A, intrastate crowdfunding, and related frameworks that expand access to private-market investment opportunities under established regulatory structures.

CfPA will convene journalists, policymakers, entrepreneurs, investors, and industry leaders at the annual Regulated Investment Crowdfunding Summit, October 20-21, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Registration is available at https://ricsummit.org. 

Learn more at https://CfPA.org, https://www.crowdfundingecosystem.com, or join as a member at https://cfpa.org/joinus.

Media Contact

Jason Fishman

Vice President | Chair, Growth Committee
Crowdfunding Professional Association, Inc.
Email: press@cfpa.org
Website: https://cfpa.org