Notice and Deemed Receipt

A notice clause sets out how a firm and a client may communicate formally, and the deemed receipt provision beside it decides when a communication counts as received. The two are usually a single short paragraph, and the second is the operative half: it will typically say that an email is treated as received when sent, that a message placed in the client portal is received when posted, and that a notice published on the website is given on publication. What that does is start clocks without anyone having read anything. A change of terms, a transfer of the account to another entity, a request for documents or a warning before closure can all take effect from a notice that was deemed received while the address on file was dormant. The clause is worth reading with the practical questions in mind: which address or channel the firm is entitled to use, whether a change of address must be notified in a particular form, and how long any objection period runs — because the period is measured from deemed receipt rather than from the day the message was actually opened.