SEC, CFTC propose easing private-fund disclosure rules

Private-fund managers moved a step closer to lighter federal reporting rules as the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission proposed narrowing Form PF, the confidential filing system built after the 2008 financial crisis to help regulators spot systemic risk.

The joint proposal, announced in Washington on April 20, 2026, would raise the filing threshold for private-fund advisers from $150 million to $1 billion in private fund assets under management and lift the large hedge fund reporting threshold from $1.5 billion to $10 billion. That would eliminate filing requirements for smaller advisers, who the agencies said make up almost half of the firms currently required to file Form PF.

The changes would also pare back how often smaller hedge fund advisers have to report. The agencies proposed eliminating quarterly and current reporting requirements for those firms, while keeping the core information pipeline in place for the larger players that dominate the market. Even with the rollback, the SEC and CFTC said Form PF would still cover more than 90% of private-fund gross assets and would continue quarterly reporting on more than 80% of hedge-fund gross assets.

What would remain matters as much as what would go. Form PF currently captures detailed information on exposures, borrowing, liquidity, strategy, performance and counterparty exposure, data regulators use to monitor leverage, cash pressure and spillover risk before stress moves beyond one fund or one manager. The agencies said the revised form would still support oversight by the Financial Stability Oversight Council and investor-protection efforts at both agencies, while also enabling a method to identify funds active in private credit, one of the fastest-growing corners of the industry.

The proposal lands after a prior expansion of Form PF was adopted on Feb. 8, 2024, under the Biden administration, with a compliance date later pushed to Oct. 1, 2026, to allow a review of the regime. That means the current move is not an abrupt reset but a direct test of how much transparency regulators say they truly need versus how much disclosure industry leaders say has become costly and duplicative.

SEC Chairman Paul S. Atkins and Commissioner Hester Peirce both signaled that the agency wanted to trim filing burdens, while the CFTC backed the same approach. The public comment period will run for 60 days after publication in the Federal Register, setting up a fight over whether the lighter regime preserves enough data to catch leverage, liquidity stress and contagion before they reach broader markets.