This post will bring to a close, for now, our survey of the requirements of new Rule 18f-4, which investment companies must comply with by August 19, 2022. This post considers whether a Chief Compliance or Risk Officer should seek to treat some or all of their funds as Limited Derivatives Users and how that choice, in turn, relates to the decision about whether to treat reverse repurchase agreements as derivatives transactions. But first, we review the compliance procedures required by Rule 18f-4 for (nearly) every fund. We also provide links to compliance checklists provided in earlier posts.

Yesterday, the Investment Adviser Association published our article on “Dealing with the New Derivatives Rule: A Guide of Legal and Compliance Professionals” in the “Compliance Corner” of its September 2021 IAA Newsletter.

At a high level, the article:

  • Provides a background on the limitations on senior securities under the Investment Company Act of

This is the seventh installment of Andrew Cross and my review of the compliance requirements of new Rule 18f‑4 and the first to deal with “unfunded commitment agreements.” Before plunging into the substance of paragraph (e) of Rule 18f-4, which regulates unfunded commitment agreements, I want to revisit a problem I have with the definition. My problem stems from trying to answer a basic question: Is a binding commitment to make a loan upon demand by the borrower, with stated principal and term and a fixed interest rate, an “unfunded commitment agreement?”

This post is the second installment of our discussion of the compliance requirements of new Rule 18f-4.

The comments on proposed Rule 18f-4 revealed a significant lacuna in the rule resulting from two unrelated changes to current regulations. First, the SEC will rescind Investment Company Act Release No. 10666 (“Release 10666”) as of August 19, 2022, the same day funds must comply with Rule 18f-4. Second, money market funds are excluded from the exemptions for derivatives transactions provided by Rule 18f-4. This post will explain why this was a problem and how the final rule addresses it.

This post ends our series critiquing the proposed definition of “unfunded commitment agreement” in re-proposed Rule 18f-4. This definition is important because it would create an exception from the Value at Risk (“VaR”) limitations the proposed rule would impose on “derivatives transactions” by investment companies. This post will recap the problems with the proposed definition and the approach we would recommend for addressing these shortcomings.

In a previous post, we compared loan commitments, which re-proposed Rule 18f-4 would treat as “unfunded commitment agreements,” and “to be announced” (“TBA”) mortgage-backed securities (“MBS”) trades and put options, which Rule 18f-4 would treat as “derivative transactions,” to identify features that may be unique to loan commitments. Our last post showed how one feature, greater uncertainty as to the term of eventual loans as compared to the average life of the mortgages that underlie TBAs (in each case resulting from prepayments of the loans and mortgages, respectively), could prevent loan commitments from fluctuating in value. If the value of the commitment does not fluctuate substantially, the commitment cannot “present an opportunity for the fund to realize gains or losses between the date of the fund’s commitment and its subsequent investment” and thus will not have a leveraging effect on the fund.

Gauging the probability of drawings and prepayments is not a practical approach to regulating commitments by investment companies, so we will continue analyzing the potential leveraging effects of the unique features of loan commitments we previously identified. Two features, the right to terminate the commitment and the expectation that the commitment would be drawn, were uniquely present in loan commitments. Two other features, the availability of offsetting transactions and posting margin to secure the commitment, were uniquely absent.

Our last post used a comparison of loan commitments, which re-proposed Rule 18f-4 would treat as “unfunded commitment agreement,” and “to be announced” (“TBA”) mortgage-backed securities trades and put options for bonds, which Rule 18f-4 would treat as “derivative transactions,” to isolate features that could be used to delineate these commitments based on their leveraging effects. Our next post will continue this analysis by considering whether each unique feature of a loan commitment mitigates its potential “leveraging effects.” Before proceeding, however, we will consider one feature shared by loan commitments and TBAs to illustrate why even seemingly common features may have different leveraging effects.

Our last post began to consider why some firm and standby commitments entered into by investment companies (including business development companies) may have “leveraging effects” while others do not. The Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) needs to identify the essential differences between these commitments to delineate when re-proposed Rule 18f-4 should treat a commitment as an “unfunded commitment agreement” rather than a “derivatives transaction.” Our last post showed that loan commitments share, at a minimum, the same interest rate risks as other types of commitments, so any absence of leveraging effects must depend on other factors.

This post continues our consideration of a carveout from the proposed Value at Risk (“VaR”) limitations of Rule 18f-4 for unfunded commitment agreements “because they do not present an opportunity for the fund to realize gains or losses between the date of the fund’s commitment and its subsequent investment ….” Our last post dealt with commitments to invest in a company’s equity. But the definition of “unfunded commitment agreement” would also include a contract “to make a loan to a company.” Commenters on the original Rule 18f-4 proposal contrasted these loan commitments with:

firm and standby commitment agreements, under which a fund commits itself to purchase a security with a stated price and fixed yield without condition or upon the counterparty’s demand.”

We do not believe the contrast is as stark as these commenters suggest. If our view is correct, we will need to search for additional factors to distinguish these loan commitments from commitment agreements that should be treated as derivatives transactions.

Having completed our detour into regulations and interpretations other than re-proposed Rule 18f-4, this post returns to considering possible justifications for carving out “unfunded commitment agreements” from the proposed Value at Risk limitations of Rule 18f-4. We have previously explained why the first two justification identified in the proposing release are ill-founded, which leaves only the following argument for a carveout:

Commenters also asserted that unfunded commitment agreements do not give rise to the risks that Release 10666 identified and do not have a leveraging effect on the fund’s portfolio because they do not present an opportunity for the fund to realize gains or losses between the date of the fund’s commitment and its subsequent investment when the other party to the agreement calls the commitment.”

We believe this is true of some, but not all, commitments. To explain why, we begin with the most important element of the proposed definition of “unfunded commitment agreement:” that it is a commitment to the company receiving the loan or other investment.