SEC and CFTC seek to balance oversight and compliance costs in new form PF proposal

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commissions (CFTC) (jointly known as “the Commissions”) recently announced in April 2026 a joint proposed amendment that would reduce the private fund reporting burden, but still provide relevant information to the Commissions, by amending Form PF. This would be accomplished primarily by increasing the assets under management (AUM) threshold that triggers reporting obligations, eliminating multiple categories of reporting and streamlining the information required from filers that remain subject to Form PF reporting requirements.

Form PF has been substantively amended in the past few years as a result of two separate amendments. The first came in the May 2023 adopted amendment (proposed in January 2022) and then the February 2024 adopted amendment (proposed in August 2022). The February 2024 amendment’s compliance date has been extended multiple times, with the current compliance requirement being Oct. 1, 2026. This third proposal in the past few years stemmed from a January 2025 Presidential Memorandum directing agencies to pause and review pending regulations that have not yet taken effect to determine if revisions were warranted.

Paul Atkins, SEC Chairman, stated that “a key pillar of my agenda is restoring balance to disclosure obligations and reducing the cost of compliance wherever possible.” He is seeking to balance the role of oversight and the costs associated with it. CFTC Chairman Michael Selig added, “By raising the filing threshold and streamlining Form PF, we are taking steps to reduce the burdens associated with filing the form.”

The main impact of this proposal would include:

• An increase in the filing threshold for all users from $150 million in private funds AUM to $1 billion. This increase would remove the requirement for approximately half of the advisers currently filing Form PF. For large hedge fund advisers, the levels would increase from $1.5 billion in AUM to $10 billion in AUM. Overall, Form PF would still obtain information from over 90 percent of private funds’ gross assets. In the proposal, there currently is not a proposed increase for large private equity fund advisers, which would remain at $2 billion in private equity AUM, or large liquidity fund advisers, which would remain at $1 billion in combined money market and liquidity fund AUM.
• The elimination of the private equity quarterly event reporting requirements under Section 6. This would impact those private equity fund advisers with $2 billion AUM or more, who are currently required to file quarterly reports on Form PF within 60 days of certain events. The SEC has concluded that while these reports provided specific events for these individual advisers, they did not provide any indications of wider industry-specific issues.
• For large hedge fund advisers, the proposal includes streamlining of current reporting. Some of the bigger changes relate to removal of the current reporting trigger for margin defaults and redefining the “operations events” to be disruptions to investment, trading, valuation, reporting, and risk management operations rather than compliance with federal securities laws. There would also be elimination or simplification of quarterly reporting requirements. The SEC commentary has implied that while these items provided relevant information, there was limited usage for the details provided.
• Within Form PF itself, this proposal would streamline various elements of the form by eliminating certain “look through” requirements, removing certain performance volatility reporting requirements, simplifying certain large hedge fund counterparty exposure reporting and marking corrections and other revisions.
• A feeder fund can qualify as a disregarded feeder fund provided that no more than 5% of its gross asset value is allocated outside a single master fund (plus US Treasury securities and cash equivalents). This would allow for aggregate reporting and no longer require separate reporting on a master-feeder structure.
• A new requirement for the SEC staff to report to the Commissions approximately every five years on if there should be any modifications to the reporting thresholds. This will provide a more formalized process for reviewing Form PF and reporting thresholds than had historically existed.

SEC Commissions Hester Peirce has stated that this proposed amendment should be considered a floor rather than a ceiling, encouraging the public to identify additional Form PF modifications that should be considered for streamlining or elimination beyond the ones that they currently addressed in the proposal. As a result, this proposal has the potential for additional changes before it is finalized.

At the time of writing of this article, the proposal remains subject to public comment until June 23, 2026. The agencies are still receiving and reviewing any comments. No final rule has been adopted. For subsequent updates, refer to the SEC website for any recent press releases and keep an eye on our website for any new insights that will provide updates surrounding final rules. There would be a 12-month compliance transition period from whenever the final rule is published.

Information included in this article was derived from SEC website and full proposal, please see SEC Full Press Release.