On September 17, 2025, the SEC and CFTC jointly approved an extension of the compliance date for the 2024 amendments to Form PF. The new compliance date is October 1, 2026.
In earlier extension releases, the regulators explained that they were giving firms more time to address practical difficulties with preparing and filing Form PF. During the June SEC meeting, Chair Atkins and Commissioners Peirce and Uyeda also criticized the substance of the 2024 amendments and the release for the June extension included a footnote stating, “the Commissions may continue to review whether Final Form PF raises substantial questions of fact, law, or policy.”
In this extension release, the regulators explained the extension is a response to the January 20, 2025 Presidential Memorandum ordering federal agencies to “consider postponing” final rules not yet in effect “for the purpose of reviewing any questions of fact, law, or policy that the rules may raise” and if such issues are found, “consider opening a comment period to allow interested parties to comment.” Notably, the release does not clearly limit this review to the 2024 amendments. Comments during the SEC Open Meeting suggest that all of Form PF may be under review.
Chair Atkins recalled that the 2024 Form PF amendments mainly responded to requests from the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC):
“We provide Form PF data to the Financial Stability Oversight Council to enable it to assess systemic risk and, as part of that process, to better understand market developments and to respond more effectively in periods of stress or crisis. Therefore, commissions, both the SEC and the CFTC, do not just collect this information to fulfill our respective regulatory mandates.”
In 2024, the Commissions adopted amendments to Form PF that modified questions to provide FSOC with, for example, metrics on new private fund investment strategies such as credit funds, which were not a distinct asset class when the original Form PF was adopted in 2010, as well as more granular information from hedge fund advisers on investment and counterparty exposures.
Key Highlights: Form PF Debate at June 2025 SEC Meeting
- Chair Atkins reported that he asked the SEC staff to consider whether the number of advisers required to file Form PF can be reduced without meaningfully reducing the key risk and exposure information needed by the FSOC member agencies to perform their responsibilities. Later in the meeting, Chair Atkins added that he wanted “to ensure that if we’re demanding information from people, it’s not excessive and doesn’t incur excessive costs.”
- Commissioner Peirce advocated for a “substantive review” of the entire Form PF, questioning the form’s utility for assessing systemic risk or promoting investor protection and arguing that fewer, more targeted data points would better serve systemic risk monitoring.
- Commissioner Uyeda argued that the SEC should consider the views of the newly-appointed FSOC because the 2024 amendments were adopted largely at the behest of the previous FSOC. He also questioned the workability, necessity, and legal authority for the 2024 amendments, as well as the soundness of the cost-benefit analysis that supported them.
- Commissioner Crenshaw contended that the SEC violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) by delaying the compliance date for the 2024 amendments to Form PF to prevent those amendments from coming into effect. She warned that courts have regarded bypassing APA requirements when repealing agency action, especially dispensing with public comment, as a “dangerous signal”.
The release for the latest extension addresses the regulators’ APA obligations, noting that the APA allows them to dispense with notice and comment when it would be “impracticable, unnecessary, or contrary to the public interest.” The release reasons that this provision allows the Commissions to dispense with notice and comment when an action “does not impose any new substantive regulatory requirements on any person.”
Is the October 1, 2026, Compliance Date Likely to be Extended Again?
Commissioner Peirce questioned whether a proper review of Form PF could be completed by October 1, 2026, arguing for a longer review to allow a “fundamental rethinking of the form.” Brian Daly, Director of the Division of Investment Management at the SEC, replied that “the process could be completed within one year” because the Division staff had “done a lot of the legwork already to give us a jumpstart on moving forward.”
Typically, the process of moving from SEC rule proposal to adoption requires more than a year, to review comments, consult stakeholders, and analyze costs and benefits. Mr. Atkins emphasized to Mr. Daly that consultation with the staff of the FSOC agencies would require particular effort from the SEC because many of the staff would be new. Further pressuring the timeline, amendments to Form PF must be adopted several months before the compliance date to give firms time to test whether their amended filings have been properly engineered for the Private Fund Reporting Depository and FINRA Gateway systems.
Commentary during the meeting provided some reason to think the Commissions may accelerate their review of Form PF by consulting only with FSOC members and stakeholders from the private fund industry.
Mr. Daly said “we look forward to continued constructive engagement with both the form filers . . . and the end users of that form data to complement our discussions, as we strive to ensure that this form is both right-sized and fit for its statutory purpose.”
Chair Atkins explained that the users of Form PF are the FSOC members. He then stressed the importance of working with these agencies and the President to “ensure that everybody’s on board,” adding that, “the public is not really involved in this information; it’s confidential.”
What does this mean for firms?
Private fund advisers will continue to report on the current Form PF, at least until October 2026.
ACA will continue to monitor the SEC and report back on any developments.