The SEC has published a rule proposal to require registered investment advisors and registered broker-dealers to provide a brief relationship summary to retail investors about relationships and services the firm offers, standard of conduct, and fees and costs associated with those services, specified conflicts of interest, and whether the firm currently has reportable legal or disciplinary events. Retail investors would receive a relationship summary at the beginning of a relationship with a firm, and would receive updated information following a material change.
The proposal goes on to state:
The Commission could require the relationship summary be filed with the Commission in a specified format, such as an text-searchable PDF file or in some other format, for example, an unstructured PDF or HTML, structured PDF, a web-fillable form, XML, XBRL or Inline XBRL. Further to this alternative, the Commission could require that the relationship summary information be filed in a structured format to facilitate validation, aggregation and comparison of disclosures, and the Commission could then make the data available on IARD (Investment Advisor Registration Depository) and EDGAR.
Comments are due by August 7, 2018.
Read the proposal.
