MFA submitted a comment letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in response to its proposed amendments to Form PF. In the letter, MFA explains that the proposed changes represent a sea change from the existing design and focus of Form PF and will impose significant new operational burdens on private fund advisers as they have to build or modify systems to gather the information required by the new reporting regime:
- We are very concerned that the one-business-day filing requirement for current reports is unrealistic, would diminish the accuracy of the data the regulators receive, and would impose significant, and likely, insurmountable burdens on advisers to private funds.
- The breadth and scope of some of the reporting requirements, as well as the fact that some of the reporting requirements lack a materiality threshold, will lead to a large number of “false positive” filings that will diminish the value of the data that the Commission collects.
- Some of the new Section 5 reporting requirements are ambiguous, making them confusing and difficult to implement, leading to additional inaccuracies and inconsistencies in reports because advisers in the same position will report differently, diminishing their value as data to the Commission and FSOC.
- Some of the reporting requirements are unnecessary and duplicative, and we recommend that they be eliminated.
