2022 was always going to be a busy year for fund boards, but it was the kind of busy that makes project administrators happy.
There was a lot of work stacked up, and a lot of tasks to be assigned and tracked, but there were also detailed plans developed after thorough analysis of the requirements of the three big new regulations whose compliance deadlines came up during 2022: Fund-of-funds, derivatives and valuations.
Trustees told Fund Directions during various phases of the implementation that their organizations were able to stay on track because they had enough time to do the analysis and planning before having to deal with powerful distractions that included an intermittent firehosing from the SEC’s suddenly superpowered effort at rulemaking – and the deafening political static regulatory opponents generated in response.
That will not be the case this year, because 2023 agendas will include the heavy lifting required to comply with SEC rules finalized during 2022 in addition to the effort required to read and analyze a volume of new rule proposals SEC officials hint they will pump out just as eagerly this year as last.
All that compliance work will be complicated by legal fights with the SEC in state and federal court and political fights that could involve Congress, state governments, the Supreme Court and other federal agencies, all resulting from what trustees said was a collision course the SEC and fund-industry were on during all of 2022, according to experts Sheng talked to for the 2023 Outlook stories that lead this edition.
Fund-board members and advisers shared their concerns about the coming year with Fund Directions reporter Ben Sheng, who summarized them in the 2023 Outlook stories listed below.
But we want to know more about the issues that concern fund boards, so we know which ones you’d like to read more about, and so we can make more noise to highlight the concerns and encourage discussion of possible solutions for fund-board members who often feel constrained from discussing those issues in public.
Just as a start, we posted a survey that will let readers remain anonymous while still giving us a better idea which of the issues listed in the 2023 Outlook stories is a big deal for them and which we need to pay more attention to in the future.
Long, complicated surveys are no fun for anyone, so we promise that any surveys we ask you to consider will remain short and to the point. This one has only three questions: What are your biggest concerns for 2023? Which of the SEC’s rule proposals is highest on your list of concerns? and What other issues are keeping you up at night.
There is no typing involved unless you want to suggest issues we didn’t put among the most frequent concerns of fund boards. For those, just click and drag issues into the order that reflects your priorities.
There is also no need to type in user names or other ID, though you can also let us know more directly about your opinions or suggestions by emailing us at FDLetters@withintelligence.com.
We won’t publish those responses or anything that would identify you or your board without your permission.
Thanks in advance for your feedback, and good luck for a year that is already shaping up to be chaotically energetic enough to make at least a few in the fund industry nostalgic for 2022.
