The staff of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Division of Investment Management (Staff) has issued an Information Update regarding the SEC’s recently adopted amendments to Form ADV, which will go into effect on October 1. After this date, any adviser filing an initial Form ADV or an amendment to an existing Form ADV must provide responses to the revised form. The Staff has received questions involving situations in which an adviser must file an other-than-annual amendment to Form ADV in the time between October 1 and the adviser’s next annual amendment. In particular, advisers questioned how to respond to new or amended questions in Item 5 and the related Schedule D sections, which require information as of the end of the adviser’s fiscal year, if the adviser did not maintain such information as of the end its last fiscal year. In the Information Update, the Staff determined not to recommend enforcement action if, during the period from October 1 through the adviser’s next annual amendment, the adviser responds “0” as a placeholder for new or amended questions in Item 5 or the related Schedule D sections for which the adviser does not have enough data to respond. Additionally, the Staff provided that in these circumstances advisers should include an entry in the Miscellaneous section of Schedule D, noting that a placeholder value was entered.

The Information Update is available here.