While the Securities and Exchange Commission has been throwing the spotlight on retiring baby boomers for most of Chair Mary Jo White’s soon-to-be ended tenure, SEC Investor Advocate Rick Fleming is saying the agency may need to shift its sights more to millennials.

While millennials are famously beset with mounds of student debt, they are accumulating significant wealth, the SEC Investor Advocate pointed out.

“The Millennial generation, may place greater importance on environmental, social and governance aspects of a business and the Commission should be prepared to respond to those changes,” Fleming told a North American Securities Administrators Association corporate finance training session Saturday in Houston Saturday.

With the oldest millennials in their thirties, they are poised to be the largest generation in the history of both the United States and the world, he said.

“This generation will be a force in the U.S. economy for decades to come. said Fleming.

Speaking on White’s disclosure effectiveness review, Fleming said the SEC should study the relative risk of investments in smaller companies vis-à-vis larger companies, and whether it even makes sense to reduce disclosure in those smaller companies if they present a higher risk to investors.  

He claimed when small business advocates push for weaker disclosure requirements for smaller entrepreneurs they could be harming the them.

“If given the choice between investing in a company that provides full disclosure or one that provides scaled-back disclosure, the choice is easy.  Investors will tend to gravitate toward the companies that play by the full set of disclosure rules,” Fleming said.