The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) on April 20, 2026, jointly proposed a series of amendments to Form PF, the confidential reporting document used by investment advisers to private funds. The proposal is intended to significantly reduce the regulatory reporting burden on the private fund industry by raising filing thresholds and streamlining existing data collection requirements. This move represents a shift in the regulatory approach toward private fund oversight, focusing on high-level systemic risk data rather than granular operational details.
The most significant change in the proposal is a substantial increase in the filing threshold for private fund advisers. The Commissions have proposed raising the minimum threshold for reporting from $150 million in private fund assets under management to $1 billion. According to agency data, this adjustment would eliminate Form PF filing requirements for nearly half of the advisers currently obligated to submit the form. Furthermore, the proposal seeks to raise the threshold for large hedge fund advisers from $1.5 billion to $10 billion in hedge fund assets under management.
SEC Chairman Paul S. Atkins stated that a key pillar of the current regulatory agenda is restoring balance to disclosure obligations and reducing the cost of compliance. Atkins noted that prior amendments to Form PF had led to overly burdensome requirements that distracted advisers from their core investment functions without providing a commensurate benefit to regulators. CFTC Chairman Michael S. Selig added that the agencies are taking steps to reduce the burdens associated with the form while ensuring that necessary information for systemic risk monitoring is still collected by the Financial Stability Oversight Council.
Despite the proposed increase in thresholds, the Commissions indicated that Form PF would continue to capture data on more than 90 percent of private fund gross assets. The proposed amendments also include a new method to identify funds that are active in the private credit market, reflecting the sector's growth. Additionally, the proposal suggests eliminating or streamlining several specific questions within the form, including those related to investment strategies and counterparty exposures that were expanded during the previous administration in 2024.
This proposal comes after a series of compliance date extensions for the Form PF amendments originally adopted in February 2024. Those rules, which had significantly increased the granularity of required reporting, had their compliance deadline pushed back multiple times, most recently to October 1, 2026. The new proposal, designated as Investment Advisers Act Release No. 6959, will be published in the Federal Register with a 60-day public comment period. The Commissions will review the feedback to determine if further adjustments are necessary before finalizing the rules.