Form PF; Reporting Requirements for All Filers and Private Credit Funds (Joint Trades)
Summary
SIFMA AMG, The Managed Funds Association (MFA), American Investment Council (AIC), Alternative Credit Council (ACC), and Loan Syndications and Trading Association (LSTA) provided comments to the to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in response to the Commissions’ request for comment on private credit fund reporting and whether to make revisions to the form to capture private credit fund information specifically in the joint proposed rules to amend Form PF (Proposed Rules). 1
Excerpt
As recognized by the Commissions, “Form PF provides the Commissions and FSOC with important information about the basic operations and strategies of private funds and has helped establish a baseline picture of the private fund industry for use in assessing systemic risk.” 2 Specifically, it was designed to provide FSOC with empirical data to monitor and assess such risk, if any.
Since the adoption of Form PF in 2011, the Commissions have evolved the collection of data when they identified significant information gaps or where they determined that more granular information would improve their understanding of the private fund industry and any potential for systemic risk within it. 3 While this has led to challenges that the Proposed Rules meaningfully address and which our broader Form PF comment letters seek to further target, our members recognize that this has led to more detailed data collection with respect to private credit funds, which we believe helpfully allows the Commissions to monitor private credit funds and better understand their impacts on the markets and investors. Private credit funds provide regulators with comprehensive, relevant data through the existing form, including total fund borrowings, investment strategies, and consolidated counterparty exposure reporting. Through analysis of such data, top financial regulators have publicly affirmed their consensus view that private credit does not pose systemic risk to U.S. financial stability. 4 We anticipate that once Form PF, as amended in 2024, (the “2024 Form PF”) is in compliance with the additional amendments that will result from the Commissions’ Proposed Rules, SEC staff would be in a position to include private credit data broken down by private credit strategy in the quarterly staff report on Form PF statistics. This would further enhance transparency around private credit funds and improve the quality of data regulators receive, which our members strongly support.
- Form PF; Reporting Requirements for All Filers, 91 Fed. Reg. 22232 (Apr. 24, 2026) (“2026 Proposing Release”) at 22258, available at https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2026-04-24/pdf/2026-07993.pdf.
- Form PF; Reporting Requirements for All Filers and Large Hedge Fund Advisers, 89 Fed. Reg. 17984 (Mar 12, 2024) at 17985, available at: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2024-03-12/pdf/2024-03473.pdf.
- Id.
- In an interview on April 15, 2026 with CNBC’s Invest In America Forum, U.S Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent noted: “at Treasury, we monitor all aspects of the capital markets, and private credit is one. I think it’s been an important new product, and we’re keeping track of it. . . . [N]one of our work has shown that there would be a systemic problem.” On April 13, 2026, SEC Chairman Paul Atkins noted: “I think as we have been looking at this area, at least as of now, it is not a systemic risk.” See Financial Times, “Wall Street watchdog says private credit is ‘not a systemic risk,’” Martin Arnold, Apr. 13, 2026, available at: https://www.ft.com/content/9bde1fe8-059c-4c68-bf19-5ef7a36eab22?syn-25a6b1a6=1. Further, the Federal Reserve’s financial stability analysis found that private credit funds’ vulnerabilities “appear limited” because most use little leverage and have low redemption risks, making it “unlikely that these funds would amplify market stress.” See Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Financial Stability Report (May, 2023) at 45-47, available at: https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/financial-stability-report-20230508.pdf. Also a 2025 Federal Reserve Bank of Boston report found that the shift in direct lending from banks to private credit reduces financial stability risk. See Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, Could the Growth of Private Credit Pose a Risk to Financial System Stability? (May 21, 2025), available at: https://www.bostonfed.org/publications/current-policy-perspectives/2025/could-the-growth-of-private-credit-pose-a-risk-to-financial-system-stability#aab8f77c-8b8d-432c-8b9d-336bc4921bf0.