The Securities and Exchange Commission has designated the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority as the agency to develop and maintain the system for hedge fund advisors to to receive new registration forms for hedge fund advisers and established a filing fee of $150.
Form PF, as it is known, helps the SEC understand a lot more about leverage, credit providers, investor concentration, and fund performance. The regulator will share the information with the Financial Stability Oversight Council, which now monitors systemic risk.
The new reporting system for Form PF would be an extension of the current FINRA system used to accept separate Form ADVs called the Investment Registration Depository (IARD) system. The $150 fee will be the same for quarterly and annual filers.
Advisers to hedge funds with under $1 billion in assets will need to file a condensed version of Form PF annually while larger advisers will need to complete a longer more detailed version quarterly. In both cases, the SEC wants to know the value of assets under management, the amount of debt being used, counterparty credit risk exposure and performance for each fund.
"The Commission believes that FINRA, as the current operator of the IARD, is uniquely situated to develop and deploy the Form PF filing system in a timely manner," says the SEC in a recent notice outlining the filing fees which advisers must pay. The regulator will implement the fee unless it orders a hearing. Any request for a hearing to dispute the fee must be submitted by Oct. 21.
