SEC increases frequency of reporting fund holdings to agency and public

The SEC adopted amendments Aug. 28 that will require registered investment funds to report their portfolio holdings on a monthly basis rather than quarterly basis and also increase the frequency of making such data publicly available.

“Reliable, accessible data benefits everyone,” SEC Chair Gary Gensler said in an Aug. 28 news release. “These amendments will benefit investors through greater transparency of funds’ investment portfolios and improve the commission’s oversight of the asset management industry.”

Specifically, the amendments require that funds filing Form N-PORT reports, which detail a fund’s monthly portfolio holdings, do so “on a monthly basis within 30 days after the end of the month to which they relate,” rather than filing “on a quarterly basis, within 60 days after quarter-end,” according to the news release.

Those reports would then be made available to the public 60 days after the end of each month, replacing the current, less frequent practice of making the reports publicly available in the third month of each quarter.

The SEC finalized the amendments in a 3-2 vote at an Aug. 28 meeting, as Republican Commissioners Hester M. Peirce and Mark T. Uyeda voted against their adoption.

“Public disclosure of Form N-PORT data raises the risk of predatory trading, where the manager’s careful investment decisions can be easily and cheaply copied,” Uyeda said at the meeting. “Further, I am concerned that more frequent disclosure of portfolio holdings can put the fund at a disadvantage relative to other investment pools that compete in such markets, such as hedge funds, family offices (and) collective investment trusts, that are not subject to these requirements.”

The Investment Company Institute, a trade association representing regulated investment funds, had similar concerns.

ICI President and CEO Eric Pan said that increasing the frequency of public disclosure of Form N-PORT data “will open fund managers to a greater risk of predatory trading that will harm fund shareholders, without any corresponding benefit,” according to an Aug. 28 statement.

“ICI has also questioned the SEC’s requirement to have funds file these holdings within 30 days of month end given the volume of information required and the SEC’s history of data security breaches,” Pan added in the statement. “Additionally, the commission continues to give little consideration to the disproportionate burden of its rulemaking on smaller fund complexes.”

The amendments will take effect Nov. 17, 2025, though fund groups with net assets of less than $1 billion will have until May 18, 2026, to comply.

The amendments, first proposed in November 2022, were originally included in a larger proposed rule that featured a requirement for any open-end fund, other than a money market fund or ETF, to use swing pricing: a pricing mechanism that adjusts a fund's value based on trading activity, so redeeming shareholders bear transaction costs rather than diluting other shareholders. The proposal would have implemented a "hard close,” requiring that funds receive trades by a certain time, typically around 4 p.m. Eastern time, to execute them at that day's price.

The swing pricing requirement faced significant pushback from lawmakers and industry groups, and the SEC ultimately dropped it from the final rule, vowing to reissue a proposal on swing pricing by April, according to its most recent regulatory agenda.

Republican Commissioner Peirce expressed concern that the Form N-PORT amendments got lost in the context of the larger proposal, suggesting that the SEC should have re-issued a proposal on the amendments as well.

“I think if we had really allowed people the time to focus on this particular set of amendments, we would have gotten more feedback, which would have been quite helpful,” Peirce said at the meeting.