WASHINGTON —The Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Securities and Exchange Commission today jointly proposed amendments to reduce reporting burdens for private funds. 

The agencies proposed to amend Form PF, the confidential reporting form for certain SEC-registered investment advisers to private funds, including those that also are registered with the CFTC as a commodity pool operator or a commodity trading advisor. Form PF collects information designed to facilitate the Financial Stability Oversight Council’s monitoring of systemic risk in the private fund industry. The CFTC and SEC may use the information collected on Form PF in their regulatory programs, including examinations, investigations, and investor protection efforts relating to private fund advisers. 

“By raising the filing threshold and streamlining Form PF, we are taking steps to reduce the burdens associated with filing the form,” said CFTC Chairman Michael S. Selig. “I look forward to reading the public comments to ensure we get these changes right so that we eliminate unnecessary costs and burdens for filers.”

“A key pillar of my agenda is restoring balance to disclosure obligations and reducing the cost of compliance wherever possible,” said SEC Chairman Paul S. Atkins. “Prior amendments to Form PF have led to overly burdensome disclosure requirements for advisers, distracting them from their core investment functions, often without a commensurate benefit to regulators’ use of the collected data. These proposed changes would help to rationalize the scope of Form PF requirements to support its purpose and bring our overall disclosure regime back into alignment.”

The proposed amendments would eliminate filing requirements for smaller advisers, who represent almost half of the advisers that currently must file Form PF. The proposal would raise the filing threshold for all filers from $150 million in private fund assets under management to $1 billion. Form PF would continue to obtain information on over 90% of private fund gross assets. 

The proposed amendments also would eliminate quarterly and current reporting requirements for smaller hedge fund advisers and substantially reduce other reporting requirements for these advisers, significantly reducing burdens for almost two-thirds of the advisers that currently must file Form PF quarterly, and are subject to current reporting and these other reporting requirements. The proposal would raise the reporting threshold for large hedge fund advisers from $1.5 billion in hedge fund assets under management to $10 billion. Form PF would continue to obtain information quarterly on over 80% of hedge fund gross assets. 

In addition to amending these thresholds, the proposal would eliminate or streamline many Form PF requirements.

The proposal requests comments on all the proposed amendments. 

The proposing release for the amendments will be published in the Federal Register, and the public comment period will remain open until 60 days after publication in the Federal Register.