SEC Proposes Changes to EDGAR Filer Access and Account Management

Who may be interested: Registered Investment Companies, Investment Advisers.

Quick Take: The SEC recently proposed amendments which would require entities (Filers) that make filings with the SEC using the EDGAR system (EDGAR), including investment advisers making Form 13F and Form 13H filings, to authorize and maintain individual account administrators to manage the Filer’s EDGAR account. These individuals would also be required to have individual account credentials to access the Filer’s EDGAR account and make filings on behalf of the Filer.

The proposals would amend Rules 10 and 11 of Regulation S-T and Form ID and would require that a Filer authorize and maintain at least two (unless the Filer is an individual or single-member company) individual account administrators who would be responsible for managing the Filer’s EDGAR account through a new dashboard feature. The proposed amendments would also allow a Filer to authorize additional individuals to perform functions on the dashboard (i.e., submit filings, among other things) on behalf of the Filer provided that each such individual has obtained account credentials through Login.gov, a secure sign in service of the U.S. General Services Administration. Further, through its account administrators, a Filer would be required to annually confirm that all individuals and delegated entities listed on its account dashboard are authorized by the Filer to act on its behalf and that all dashboard information about the Filer is accurate.

The new dashboard would provide a number of functionalities to the account administrator, which would, for example, permit the administrator to:

• add and remove authorized individuals,
  
  
• adjust the authority of an authorized individual, and
  
  
• confirm the accuracy of information on the dashboard.

Under the proposed amendments, which were referred to in the proposing release as “EDGAR Next”, the SEC would also provide optional application programming interfaces, or APIs, for machine-to-machine communication with EDGAR, including to submit filings and to facilitate retrieval of information by a Filer regarding its submissions.

The SEC’s Press Release can be found here. Comments on the proposed amendments are due by November 21, 2023.