On July 8, 2024, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, part of the Office of Management and Budget, within the Executive Office, released the Spring 2024 Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions, reporting on potential rulemaking topics that administrative agencies, including the SEC, will consider in the short and long term. These topics include several areas of interest to registered funds, investment advisers and other financial institutions. The topics are categorized in one of three rulemaking stages: proposed rule, final rule and long-term actions.

Notable changes from the Fall 2023 agenda include movement of the SEC’s open-end fund liquidity risk management program and swing pricing rule amendments, safeguarding advisory client assets (i.e., custody) rulemaking, and broker-dealer and investment adviser use of predictive data analytics rulemaking from the final rule stage back to the proposed rule stage. The Spring 2024 agenda indicates these rulemaking initiatives will be re-proposed.

Proposed Rule Stage. Matters identified in the proposed rule stage include the following:

• open-end fund liquidity risk management programs and swing pricing (to be re-proposed);
• safeguarding advisory client assets to improve and modernize the regulations around the custody of funds or investments (to be re-proposed);
• broker-dealer and investment adviser conflicts of interest in the use of predictive data analytics, artificial intelligence, machine learning and similar technologies in certain investor interactions (to be re-proposed);
• Regulation D and Form D amendments, including updates to the accredited investor definition;
• registered investment companies’ fees and fee disclosure—a topic that first appeared in the spring 2022 regulatory agenda but has not yet resulted in any SEC release;
• joint rulemaking with other agencies to establish data standards for the collection of information reported to each agency by financial entities under their jurisdiction, implementing the requirements of amendments to the Financial Stability Act of 2010 (a topic subsequently addressed with a proposed rule issued by the SEC and eight other federal agencies on August 2, 2024); and
• the listing and trading of exchange-traded products (ETPs) on national securities exchanges relating to a 2015 SEC request for comment

Final Rule Stage. Matters identified in the final rule stage include the following:

• enhanced disclosures by investment advisers and funds about environmental, social and governance (ESG) practices;
• cybersecurity risk management for investment advisers and funds;
• outsourcing by investment advisers and rules related to advisers’ oversight of third-party service providers;
• inflation adjustments for the dollar threshold definition of a qualifying venture capital fund (subsequently addressed by the SEC with an adopting release issued on August 21, 2024);
• proposed Regulation Best Execution, which would require detailed policies and procedures for all broker-dealers and more robust policies and procedures for broker-dealers engaging in certain conflicted transactions with retail customers, as well as related review and documentation requirements; and
• cybersecurity risk management for broker-dealers, national securities exchanges, transfer agents and other market participants.

Long-Term Actions. Matters identified in the “long-term actions” stage of rulemaking include the following:

• the role of certain third-party service providers, including index providers, model portfolio providers and pricing services, their treatment under the Advisers Act and the implications for the asset management industry; and
• the regulatory regime for transfer agents.

The list of topics in the proposed rule or final rule stages is available here; the “long-term actions” list is available here. SEC Chair Gary Gensler issued a statement in connection with the release of the regulatory agenda.