Statement On The Extension Of The Compliance Date For The Amendments To Form PF, SEC Commissioner Mark T. Uyeda

Thank you, Chairman Atkins and thank you to the staffs of both the SEC and the CFTC for your work.  Today’s extension gives affected persons additional time to comply with the requirements associated with the new amendments to Form PF.  I appreciate the comment letters that have expressed concerns with the technical aspects of complying with revised Form PF that have helped inform this extension.[1]

In addition to giving time to market participants and the Commissions to address these technical issues, the delay gives flexibility to address other unforeseen concerns with respect to revised Form PF.  This approach will mitigate the potential for an outcome where uncertainty, confusion, and ambiguity in technical requirements results in firms spending significant amounts of money to file reports with data that is useless, inconsistent, and not of any value to the SEC or other government agencies that rely on such reports.   

Today’s action is necessary to address significant shortcomings with the 2024 amendments to Form PF.[2]  The rulemaking ran afoul of what “good regulation” looks like, in that it failed to answer a fundamental question: do the economic and information benefits yield results that are commensurate with the compliance burdens to the firms?  When the burdens outweigh the benefits—such as where the provisions are both costly and likely ineffective—this represents the worst rulemaking outcome. 

For example, commenters expressed concern about disaggregating each component fund of a master-feeder arrangement and parallel fund structure.[3]  One commenter explained that disaggregated information would be “misleading and difficult to analyze,” and that it is “not the type of information that the Commissions likely would be able to readily and accurately re-aggregate.”[4]  The Commissions’ response was simply to “disagree” that the information would be misleading.[5]  As firms have tried to implement what the Commissions required, the technical shortcomings with these and other requirements have become more apparent.

In moving forward, it is important to balance the sensitivity of the data included in Form PF with any corresponding benefits.  The costs associated with this data are significant—both in terms of compliance costs and demands on firm personnel. 

Thank you to the SEC staff in the Division of Investment Management, the Division of Economic and Risk Analysis, the Office of the General Counsel for your work on this matter to date.