On February 24th, the SEC updated its Public Alert: Unregistered Soliciting Entities (PAUSE) list, which contains entities that have been subject of investor complaints. This list of entities falsely claim to be registered, licensed, and/or located in the United States, impersonate genuine registered securities firms, and claim to be fictitious regulators, government agencies, or organizations. The goal of the PAUSE list is to better inform investors so that they can avoid becoming the victim of fraud.

The SEC Office of Structured Disclosure has announced that the 2012 and 2013 INVEST taxonomies will no longer be supported by EDGAR as of the EDGAR release currently scheduled for March 9, 2020. These taxonomies were intended for use in the voluntary filing program. The voluntary filing program has ended, so support for these taxonomies will be removed.

An interim release (version 5.2ab) of all applications in the GoFiler Suite has been released. This interim release addresses issues that have arisen due to the latest Windows 10 Feature Update 1909. Because this is an interim release that is not part of our regular updates, you will need to use the Updater.exe file within the application installation directory in order to update the software. Users who are working with IFRS inline XBRL are also encouraged to download this release.

On January 30th, the SEC proposed amendments to modernize, simplify, and enhance particular financial disclosure requirements in Regulation S-K. These amendments would eliminate duplicative disclosures and update and enhance Management’s Discussion and Analysis (MD&A) information, which would benefit investors while simplifying compliance efforts for companies. In addition, the SEC announced it is providing guidance on key performance indicators and metrics in MD&A disclosures.

Five federal agencies voted on January 30th to invite public comment on a proposal that would modify regulations that govern the implementation of the Volcker rule’s general prohibition on banking entities investing in or sponsoring hedge funds or private equity funds (known as “covered funds”). Since the regulations implementing the Volcker rule were finalized in 2013, the rule has created some compliance uncertainty and also imposed limits on certain banking services and activities that the rule was not intended to restrict.

On January 23rd, the SEC announced that it will host a conference that will focus on municipal securities, which are predominantly owned by Main Street investors and help finance important public projects, including schools, roads, and utilities. This conference, scheduled for March 10th, is entitled “Spotlight on Transparency: A Discussion of Secondary Market Municipal Securities Disclosure Practices”.

The SEC’s Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations (OCIE) announced on January 7th its 2020 examination priorities. OCIE publishes its priorities on an annual basis to enhance the transparency of its examination program and to provide insights into its risk-based approach, including the areas it believes present potential risks to investors and the integrity of the US capital markets. Developing the annual examination priorities is a collaborative effort that begins with feedback from examination staff (who are uniquely positioned to identify the practices, products, services, and other factors that may pose risk to investors or markets) and other sources of input and advice from the SEC Chairman, other Commissioners, other SEC divisions and departments, and other federal financial regulatory agencies.

Version 5.2a of all applications in the GoFiler Suite has been released. This release corresponds to EDGAR 20.1 and contains changes to various EDGAR forms. Additionally, changes and improvements have been made to the Find and Replace and Proof to Browser functions and to Risk Return XDX. It also includes a new function, the ID Manager, to help manage and correct duplicate IDs inside HTML documents.

On January 27, 2020, EDGAR Release 20.1 was released by the Securities and Exchange Commission. This release included changes to Form ATS-N, a new “accelerated filer status” field on a number of form types, and an upgrade to require Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.2 when connecting to the EDGAR System.

While the Novaworks tools are principally used for EDGAR, sometimes there are non-EDGAR things to do. One of my activities is maintaining a website for a not-for-profit group supporting amateur radio. As part of my duties, the front page of the site has a section on recent non-club news which requires me to perform a little research and then add the links to the page. This script helps reduce the time to create the links.

As part of security enhancements in the forthcoming EDGAR 20.1 release, the SEC will no longer accept connections to the EDGAR system that do not follow the TLS 1.2 standard. Since the GoFiler family of products uses Microsoft’s Security Support Provider Interface to connect to the EDGAR system, support for TLS 1.2 in the application is based on the current Windows operating system and Internet Explorer.

On January 9, 2020, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced the second fee rate advisory for fiscal year 2020. Starting on February 18, 2020, the fee rates applicable to most securities transactions will be set at $22.10 per million dollars.

On December 30th, the SEC proposed amendments to codify certain staff consultations and modernize certain aspects of its auditor independence framework. These amendments would update select aspects of the nearly two-decade-old auditor independence rule set to structure the independence rules and analysis more effectively such that relationships and services that would not pose threats to an auditor’s objectivity and impartiality do not trigger non-substantive rule breaches or potentially time consuming committee review.