LOS ANGELES—In the last couple of years, the SEC has made some major regulatory changes that have been game changing for the crowdfunding industry. These regulatory shifts include everything from the ability to now market and advertise an investment opportunity to Reg A+, which allows unaccredited investors to play in the investment world. Prior to these changes, fixing the regulatory incongruence seemed to be at the top of the priority list for the crowdfunding industry, but since, there hasn't been much noise about regulatory issues. Has the SEC caught up to technology?

“Getting Reg A+ was a huge step in the right direction, but I don't know that as we grow as a company, we will limit ourselves to just the Reg A+ market as the only avenue by which we raise money,” Brandon Jenkins, COO of Fundrise, tells GlobeSt.com. “There is a continuous improvement process that allows the kind of technology for many people across the country to be matched with why these regulations exist, which are to protect the individual investor. We believe as a company that there are continued improvements that can be made, but Reg A+ was a big step that really allowed us to take up larger projects and many larger projects.”

These regulatory changes have helped the crowdfunding industry grow at record speeds. RealtyMogul.com, for example, crowdfunded the first hotel and did it in record timing because of the ability to advertise the deal. For companies like Fundrise, the Reg A+ policy has been instrumental, helping to grow its eREIT business and reach a new demographic of investors.

However, Jenkins says that it isn't all about the regulatory changes. The technology of these sites have also been hugely beneficial to the growth of crowdfunding, making it capable to handle the volume of investors that regulations like Reg A+ allows. “All of the data, information, underwriting and asset management is fed through the data and technology models that we has built over the past few years,” says Jenkins. “That allows for a scale for both investor and asset management that wasn't feasible until the combination of new technologies with some of the things that we have been building through innovation. We always have to be innovating an providing the next better thing to our clients.”