Form 485A24E Files Dataset

The Form 485A24E Files Dataset is a closed historical corpus of post-effective amendments filed on EDGAR by open-end management investment companies — mutual funds and certain insurance-company separate accounts — between January 1994 and January 1998. Each record is a single SEC Form 485A24E submission, identified by its accession number and materialized as one accession folder containing a metadata.json manifest and the textual documents that constituted the original EDGAR filing. Form 485A24E is a hybrid amendment: a Rule 485(a) post-effective amendment to a Form N-1A registration statement under the Securities Act of 1933 paired on a single cover page with a Rule 24e-2 registration of additional fund shares under the Investment Company Act of 1940, with the registration fee netted against shares redeemed during the prior fiscal year. The form was retired in January 1998 once Rule 24f-2 indefinite share registration made the 24e-2 fee-offset mechanic obsolete, so the dataset is a sealed window onto a discontinued 1990s filing practice. Files are distributed as monthly ZIP containers organized by year, with TXT and JSON members per accession.

Dataset APIs

Dataset Files

What This Dataset Contains

The dataset contains every Form 485A24E filing accepted on EDGAR during the form's active lifetime, from general fund-filing availability in January 1994 through the form's formal discontinuation in January 1998. Each filing is a post-effective amendment to a previously effective registration statement filed by an open-end management investment company — typically a Massachusetts business trust, Delaware statutory trust, or corporation organized as a series trust covering multiple portfolios and share classes — and combines two regulatory mechanics: a Rule 485(a) substantive disclosure update to the underlying Form N-1A and a Rule 24e-2 registration of additional shares with the prior-fiscal-year redemption credit applied as a fee offset.

Records are distributed in monthly ZIP containers following the path scheme <YYYY>/<YYYY>-<MM>.zip. Inside each archive sits a single year-month directory holding one subfolder per accession, with the accession number stripped of dashes and zero-padded to 18 digits (EDGAR accession 0000893220-96-001484 becomes folder 000089322096001484/). The dataset's monthly containers span exactly the January 1994 – January 1998 EDGAR acceptance window for the form. Within each accession folder, all retained files are 7-bit ASCII text or JSON; image and binary attachments from the original EDGAR submission are excluded.

Content Structure of a Single Record

1. What one record represents

One record is a single EDGAR submission of Form 485A24E, identified by its SEC accession number and materialized on disk as one accession folder. The folder bundles a metadata.json descriptor with the textual documents that constituted the original submission: the primary post-effective amendment body and every accompanying exhibit. The folder as a whole, manifest plus document files, is the atomic record unit; metadata.json is the structured index for that record.

2. The underlying SEC filing

Form 485A24E is a hybrid post-effective amendment used by open-end management investment company (mutual funds and unit investment trusts that are registered investment companies) between January 1994 and January 1998. It combined two regulatory mechanics on a single cover page: a Rule 485(a) post-effective amendment to a previously effective registration statement on Form N-1A under the Securities Act of 1933, and a simultaneous registration of additional shares under Rule 24e-2 of the Investment Company Act of 1940. Rule 24e-2 allowed a fund to register additional shares while netting the incremental registration fee against the dollar value of shares redeemed during the prior fiscal year, the fee-offset election that is the defining structural feature of this form. The form was discontinued in January 1998 once Rule 24f-2 (indefinite share registration) made the 24e-2 mechanic obsolete.

Because 485A24E is an amendment skeleton rather than a fresh filing template, the substantive body inside the primary document is laid out on the Form N-1A registration-statement framework: cover page, calculation-of-registration-fee table, cross-reference sheet, prospectus, statement of additional information (SAI), Part C, and exhibits. The amendment character of the filing surfaces in two places: the cover page checks both the 1933 Act and 1940 Act boxes with their own sequential amendment numbers, and the body carries redline-style edits relative to the prior effective amendment.

3. Container layout and per-record file structure

Records are distributed in monthly ZIP containers organized by year. Each archive follows the path scheme <YYYY>/<YYYY>-<MM>.zip. Inside the archive sits a single year-month directory (for example 1996-08/) holding one subfolder per accession. Accession folders are named with the SEC accession number stripped of dashes and zero-padded to 18 digits: EDGAR accession 0000893220-96-001484 becomes folder 000089322096001484/. Because the form was accepted on EDGAR only between January 1994 and January 1998, the dataset's monthly containers span exactly that window.

Within an accession folder, the file inventory is flat:

• metadata.json — exactly one per folder, the structured descriptor of the record.
• document-<N>.txt — one plain-text file per document in the original EDGAR submission, where <N> is the integer EDGAR sequence number. The primary 485A24E body is document-1.txt; subsequent files carry the exhibits in EDGAR-assigned order.

Original EDGAR filenames such as seili1.txt are not preserved on disk; the sequence number is the sole link back to the manifest entry. Image and binary attachments listed in the original EDGAR submission are excluded from the dataset. All retained files are 7-bit ASCII text. There is no nested directory structure inside an accession folder.

4. The metadata.json schema

metadata.json carries the structured fingerprint of the record. The top-level keys are:

documentFormatFiles[]

Each entry describes one document in the original EDGAR submission:

• sequence — the EDGAR sequence number as a string; matches the <N> in document-<N>.txt.
• type — the EDGAR document-type code: 485A24E for the primary amendment, the EX-99.B<n> family for registration-statement exhibits (consents, plans, certificates, powers of attorney, financial statements), and EX-27 (with optional .<m> suffix per fund series) for Financial Data Schedules.
• description — the free-text label from the EDGAR header (e.g. "SEI LIQUID ASSET TRUST P.E. AMENDMENT # 20"); preserved verbatim including original capitalization, spacing, and typographic quirks.
• size — byte size of the document as a string.
• documentUrl — the EDGAR URL for the document; per-document entries point into the archive directory, while the trailing wrapper entry points at the combined .txt.

A trailing sentinel entry is always present whose sequence and type fields contain only a single space; it represents the full combined-submission .txt on EDGAR and has no on-disk counterpart in the accession folder. Consumers iterating the manifest must skip it when joining to on-disk files.

entities[]

Each entry describes one filer entity:

• companyName — registrant name with role suffix in parentheses, e.g. "SEI LIQUID ASSET TRUST (Filer)".
• cik — unpadded numeric CIK string.
• type — the form type associated with the entity row.
• act — the securities-act code; "40" denotes the Investment Company Act of 1940, the governing act for the 24e-2 component.
• fileNo — the EDGAR file number, typically the 811- Investment Company Act file number.
• filmNo — EDGAR film/microfiche reference.
• irsNo — IRS Employer Identification Number, digits only.
• stateOfIncorporation — two-letter state code.
• fiscalYearEnd — MMDD-formatted fiscal year-end.

For most 485A24E filings the array contains a single registrant trust; series companies may list additional related entities.

5. The primary submission (document-1.txt)

The primary body is plain ASCII text in EDGAR's SGML-style markup. The split per-document files in the accession folder do not include the surrounding <DOCUMENT>...<TEXT> envelope; that wrapper exists only in the combined .txt referenced by linkToTxt. The split files contain only the inner document body.

Inside document-1.txt the structural sequence is:

1. Header block — opens with <PAGE> 1, an as-filed dateline, the EDGAR file numbers (the 2- Securities Act number and the 811- Investment Company Act number), and the standard SEC banner.
2. Form N-1A cover page — declares the registration statement under both the 1933 Act and the 1940 Act, with checkbox markers (/X/) indicating the post-effective amendment number applicable under each act. This dual-act cover is the canonical surface of Form 485A24E.
3. Calculation of Registration Fee table — the table mandated by Rule 24e-2: proposed maximum aggregate offering price of newly registered shares, the dollar value of shares redeemed during the prior fiscal year claimed as an offset, and the net registration fee paid. This is the definitional mechanic of the form and the most reliable structured signal that the filing is a genuine 24e-2 amendment.
4. Cross-Reference Sheet — a tabular mapping of Form N-1A item numbers to the prospectus and SAI sections that respond to each item.
5. Prospectus — investment objectives, principal investment policies, risk factors, fee table, performance history where applicable, purchase and redemption procedures, distribution arrangements, and shareholder services.
6. Statement of Additional Information (SAI) — expanded disclosure on investment policies and restrictions, trustees and officers, investment-advisory and distribution agreements, brokerage allocation, capital structure, and financial statements (often incorporated by reference).
7. Part C — Other Information — the exhibit index, undertakings, and signatures of trustees and officers (frequently executed under powers of attorney filed as exhibits).

Throughout the body, <PAGE> N markers (column-aligned) demarcate logical pages of the paper-equivalent document. Tabular content is wrapped in EDGAR's <TABLE> / <CAPTION> / <S> / <C> tags, where <S> introduces the left-most stub column and <C> introduces value columns. These tags are EDGAR-specific column hints, not HTML elements, and column boundaries are whitespace-aligned in fixed-width ASCII; processing requires a column-aware parser rather than an HTML or XML parser. Redline-style edit marks (bracketed insertions and deletions, plus - --- horizontal rules) flag changes against the prior effective amendment.

6. Exhibits

Exhibits filed with a 485A24E fall into two structural clusters.

EX-99.B series — narrative exhibits

The EX-99.B<n> family carries the exhibits enumerated in Form N-1A's Part C. Common members include:

• EX-99.B5 — investment-advisory, sub-advisory, or assignment-related agreements.
• EX-99.B11 — auditor consents (e.g. an accounting firm consenting to use of its report).
• EX-99.B12 — financial statements or supporting schedules.
• EX-99.B15(C) / EX-99.B15(D) — Rule 12b-1 12b-1 distribution plans and shareholder service plans, often filed once per share class.
• EX-99.B18(B) — certificates of class designation under multi-class share structures.
• EX-99.B24 — powers of attorney executed by trustees and officers authorizing signature on the registration statement.

These are short, predominantly narrative ASCII documents. They reuse the <PAGE> page-break tags and may carry occasional <TABLE>/<S>/<C> blocks for fee schedules or signature panels, but otherwise read as straight legal prose, executed agreements, or signed consents.

EX-27 — Financial Data Schedules

EX-27 documents are tagged key/value blocks rather than narrative. Each begins inside a <TABLE> <S> <C> wrapper and emits a series of named tags identifying the regulatory article, registrant, and fund series, followed by standardized line items. Typical opening tags include:

• <ARTICLE> 6 — Regulation S-X Article 6 (registered investment companies).
• <CIK> — zero-padded CIK of the registrant.
• <NAME> — registrant name.
• <SERIES> block with <NUMBER> and <NAME> for the specific fund series/class.
• <MULTIPLIER> — unit scale (e.g. 1,000 = amounts reported in thousands).
• <PERIOD-TYPE>, <FISCAL-YEAR-END>, <PERIOD-START>, <PERIOD-END> — the reporting window.
• A standardized run of financial line items: <INVESTMENTS-AT-COST>, <INVESTMENTS-AT-VALUE>, expense ratios, net assets, distributions, and so on.

One EX-27 is filed per fund series/class, so an accession can carry several near-identical schedules, each in its own document-<N>.txt. The EX-27 Financial Data Schedule format is the structured precursor to today's XBRL Financial Reports and was itself retired shortly after Form 485A24E.

7. Included content

Each accession folder contains the full textual content of the original EDGAR submission: the primary 485A24E document on its N-1A skeleton (cover page, fee calculation, cross-reference sheet, prospectus, SAI, Part C, signatures) and every textual exhibit referenced in the exhibit index — narrative EX-99.B* exhibits and one EX-27 Financial Data Schedule per series/class. metadata.json accompanies the documents and carries the manifest, filer identity, and EDGAR linkage.

8. Excluded or separate content

• Image and binary attachments are excluded across the dataset.
• The combined-submission .txt wrapper that EDGAR maintains (a single file containing every document inside <DOCUMENT> / <TYPE> / <SEQUENCE> / <FILENAME> / <TEXT> envelopes) is not stored on disk. It is referenced by linkToTxt and by the trailing sentinel manifest entry; the dataset stores only the inner per-document bodies.
• Original EDGAR filenames (the values that appeared in <FILENAME> lines of the wrapper) are not preserved; documents are renamed to document-<sequence>.txt. To recover original filenames the EDGAR combined .txt referenced by linkToTxt must be consulted.
• Series and class taxonomy fields (seriesAndClassesContractsInformation[]) are empty across the dataset because the SEC's structured series/class taxonomy was introduced years after Form 485A24E was discontinued.
• Documents incorporated by reference (typically annual-report financial statements or earlier amendments referenced by the SAI or exhibit index) are not duplicated into the 485A24E folder; they remain in their source filings on EDGAR.

9. Format characteristics specific to the 1994 – January 1998 EDGAR era

The dataset reflects an early-EDGAR text-only filing regime that has no modern analogue:

• ASCII-only documents. Every document-<N>.txt is 7-bit ASCII with EDGAR SGML-style markup. No HTML, XML, or PDF.
• EDGAR pseudo-tags rather than HTML. Logical pagination uses <PAGE> N; tabular regions use <TABLE>, optional <CAPTION>, <S> for the stub column, and <C> for value columns. These tags are positional hints layered over whitespace-aligned columns, not nested element trees, and they cannot be processed with an HTML or XML parser.
• N-1A skeleton with dual-act cover. Although filed as 485A24E, the body is structured on Form N-1A; the cover page's distinguishing trait is the simultaneous declaration under the 1933 Act (Rule 485(a) post-effective amendment) and the 1940 Act, with the Rule 24e-2 fee-offset mechanic in the registration-fee table.
• Tagged EX-27 schedules. Financial disclosure is carried through tagged Financial Data Schedules; the tag vocabulary is fixed and per-Article (Article 6 for investment companies).
• No original filenames on disk. Sequence-numbered filenames are the only stable identifier between manifest entries and on-disk documents.
• Sentinel manifest entry. The trailing documentFormatFiles[] entry — with whitespace-only sequence and type — is a structural artifact pointing to the combined .txt on EDGAR; consumers must skip it when joining to on-disk files.
• Verbatim header strings. description strings inside documentFormatFiles[] and elsewhere preserve the original EDGAR header text exactly, including upper-case formatting and original typos; exact-string lookups must accommodate this.

10. Interpretation notes

• Amendment numbering. The cover page carries two parallel amendment counters (1933 Act and 1940 Act). They typically advance in lockstep but can diverge; the post-effective amendment number is the canonical reference for tracking the registrant's prospectus history.
• Incorporation by reference. Financial statements and certain SAI sections are commonly incorporated by reference from a prior annual report or earlier amendment rather than reproduced in the 485A24E body.
• Series-level granularity inside one filing. A single 485A24E for a series trust can register additional shares for multiple series/classes simultaneously. This appears as multiple EX-27 schedules and as multi-class language in the prospectus, even though the structured seriesAndClassesContractsInformation[] array is empty.
• Rule 24e-2 fee mechanic. The registration-fee table is the most reliable structured signal that the filing is a genuine 24e-2 amendment, showing prior-fiscal-year redemptions used as an offset against the fee on newly registered shares.
• Machine extraction. Tables require column-aware parsing keyed on <TABLE> boundaries; narrative extraction can lean on <PAGE> markers as soft section breaks. EX-27 files are best parsed as ordered <TAG> value records inside the <TABLE> <S> <C> wrapper, treating the tag set as the schema. Joining on-disk documents to manifest entries should use the integer parsed from document-<N>.txt matched against documentFormatFiles[].sequence, ignoring the trailing sentinel entry.

Who Files Form 485A24E and When

Who files the record

Each Form 485A24E filing is a post-effective amendment to a registration statement filed by an open-end management investment company — a mutual fund registered under the Investment Company Act of 1940 whose shares are also registered for public offering under the Securities Act of 1933. The filer is the registrant itself: typically a Massachusetts business trust, Delaware statutory trust, or corporation, often organized as a series trust covering multiple portfolios and share classes. The investment adviser, principal underwriter, transfer agent, and individual portfolios are disclosed within the filing but are not separate filers.

Filing population

Form 485A24E was available only to open-end management investment companies registered on Form N-1A (mutual funds), Form N-3 (separate accounts organized as management investment companies), or Form N-4 (separate accounts offering variable annuity contracts as unit investment trusts).

It was not available to:

• Closed-end funds (Form N-2; 486-series amendments).
• Unit investment trusts on Form N-8B-2 / Form S-6 (separate amendment regime).
• Business development companies, face-amount certificate companies, or other specialized 1940 Act registrants.
• Operating-company issuers under the Securities Act (Forms S-1, S-3, etc., with their own post-effective amendment mechanics).

Within the 485 series, 485A24E was one of four permutations on two axes: the "A" vs "B" axis (Rule 485(b) review track vs Rule 485(b) automatic effectiveness) and the "24E" suffix (paired with a Rule 24e-2 share registration vs not). A fund without new-share registration would use Form 485APOS or Form 485BPOS; a fund whose substantive amendment qualified for automatic effectiveness while still registering new shares would use 485B24E.

Triggering conditions

A 485A24E was triggered when three conditions converged:

1. Disclosure update needed. Open-end funds offer shares continuously and must keep the Section 10(a) prospectus and SAI current. Annual updates to Form N-1A — incorporating audited financials, refreshed fee tables, and updated risk, strategy, management, and policy disclosure — drove most 485-series filings.

2. Material changes requiring SEC staff review (Rule 485(a)). Rule 485(b) permits automatic effectiveness only for narrowly defined non-substantive purposes (registering additional shares, updating financials, non-material edits, or responding to prior staff comments). Substantive changes — a new investment objective, new fundamental policies, a new pricing or distribution arrangement, or other material disclosure changes — required filing under Rule 485(a) with a delayed effective date and staff review.

3. Simultaneous registration of additional shares (Rule 24e-2). Rule 24e-2 of the Investment Company Act let an open-end fund register additional shares by post-effective amendment, computing the registration fee net of shares redeemed in the prior fiscal year (the "redemption credit" fee offset). Funds used this to maintain a cushion of registered but unsold shares for continuous offering.

The form name encodes the dual mechanic: "485A" for Rule 485(a) under the Securities Act of 1933, "24E" for Rule 24e-2 under the Investment Company Act of 1940. A single document satisfied both tracks.

Timing

There was no fixed statutory deadline tied to 485A24E itself. Filing cadence was driven by:

• Fiscal year. Annual N-1A updates were generally due within 120 days after fiscal year-end, so 485A24E filings clustered in the months following common fund year-ends.
• The 60-day default delay under Rule 485(a). A 485(a) amendment became effective 60 days after filing unless the SEC designated a later date or accelerated effectiveness. Funds had to plan around this review window when aligning effectiveness with offering or stickering deadlines.
• Continuous-offering pressure. Funds filed Rule 24e-2 amendments whenever their cushion of registered shares risked running out, often consolidated with the annual update.

An initial 485A24E was typically followed by one or more 485B-series submissions to clear staff comments and declare effectiveness.

EDGAR lifecycle and successor regime

EDGAR accepted the 485A24E submission type from general fund-filing availability in January 1994 through formal discontinuation in January 1998. The dataset spans exactly this closed window.

Discontinuation followed amendments to Rule 24f-2 adopted in 1997 and effective in early 1998. Under the revised regime:

• Open-end funds elect indefinite-shares registration under Rule 24f-2 by declaration in the registration statement, paying fees retrospectively on actual net sales rather than registering a specific share count.
• Annual fee payment and the supporting net-sales calculation moved to a standalone Form 24F-2NT ("Rule 24f-2 Notice"), filed within 90 days after fiscal year-end.
• Post-effective disclosure amendments dropped the "24E" overlay and now file simply as 485APOS (review track) or 485BPOS (automatic effectiveness).

The functional successor of a 485A24E is therefore a 485APOS for the disclosure update, paired separately with a 24F-2NT for the share-registration fee mechanics. Funds that previously combined 485B-track updates with Rule 24e-2 registrations migrated to 485BPOS plus 24F-2NT.

Important distinctions

• Filer vs participants. The legal filer is the registrant; the adviser, underwriter, transfer agent, and custodian are disclosed but do not file.
• Series trusts. A series trust files one 485A24E covering all of its portfolios; portfolios may carry their own series CIKs but are not independent filers.
• Not the initial registration. 485A24E is a post-effective amendment, not a new fund's initial registration (which uses Form N-1A directly).
• Not 485APOS / 485BPOS / 485B24E. The "A/B" axis distinguishes review track from automatic effectiveness; the "24E" suffix distinguishes amendments that also register additional shares under Rule 24e-2.
• Closed-end funds, BDCs, UITs. These never filed 485A24E; their amendments belong to the 486 series or the UIT regime.
• Closed historical window. The dataset captures a discontinued form type used between January 1994 and January 1998, not an ongoing filing path.

How This Dataset Differs From Similar Datasets or Filings

Form 485A24E sits inside a tightly clustered family of open-end investment company registration filings, where small differences in rule citation drive very different filing mechanics. Because Form 485A24E was discontinued in January 1998, its closest neighbors split into contemporaneous siblings (485B24E, 485APOS, 485BPOS, N-1A) and modern successors (Rule 24f-2 notices, today's 485APOS/485BPOS streams).

Form 485B24E — automatic-effectiveness sibling

The structural twin of 485A24E. Both combine a post-effective amendment to an open-end fund registration with Rule 24e-2 share registration. The difference is the Securities Act rule: 485A24E uses Rule 485(a), triggering a 60- or 75-day SEC review window, while 485B24E uses Rule 485(b) for automatic immediate effectiveness on non-material updates. As a result, 485A24E carries substantive changes (new investment policies, new share classes, material risk revisions); 485B24E carries routine annual refreshes and stickered prospectus updates. Both populations close at the January 1998 retirement of Rule 24e-2.

Form 485APOS — 485(a) amendment without 24e-2

Same Rule 485(a) delayed-effectiveness pathway as 485A24E, but without the embedded 24e-2 share-registration overlay. Filers used 485APOS for material disclosure changes when incremental shares were either not being registered or were handled separately (Rule 24f-1 indefinite registration, or post-1997 Rule 24f-2 notices). Prospectus and SAI content can look nearly identical to 485A24E; the differentiator is the share-registration component. 485APOS remains an active filing type; 485A24E is a closed historical corpus.

Form 485BPOS — 485(b) amendment without 24e-2

485BPOS is to 485APOS what 485B24E is to 485A24E: Rule 485(b) automatic effectiveness without the 24e-2 overlay. It is the dominant annual-update vehicle for open-end funds today, carrying the refreshed prospectus, SAI, and audited financials. Compared to 485A24E, it is narrower in regulatory scope (no incremental share registration) and procedurally faster (no review window).

Form 24F-2 / 24F-2NT / 24F-2EL — successor share-registration mechanism

These notice forms replaced the Rule 24e-2 share-registration role embedded in 485A24E. After the SEC adopted Rule 24f-2 in 1997 and ceased accepting 485A24E/485B24E in January 1998, funds shifted to indefinite share registration plus an annual Form 24F-2 reporting net sales and remitting fees. The disclosure-update half of the old combined filing migrated to 485APOS/485BPOS; the share-registration half migrated to 24F-2. 24F-2 filings are short, structured fee notices with no prospectus or SAI content.

Form N-1A — underlying registration form

N-1A is the initial registration statement for open-end management investment companies. Every 485A24E is, structurally, a post-effective amendment to a previously filed N-1A and contains an amended N-1A prospectus and SAI rather than a freestanding document. N-1A establishes the fund; 485A24E updates the already-effective N-1A and registers additional shares against it. Reconstructing a fund's full disclosure history requires the original N-1A plus the chain of 485-series amendments.

Form N-14 — registration on merger or reorganization

Form N-14 registers securities issued in a fund acquisition, merger, or reorganization. It overlaps with 485A24E only in that both register investment company securities under the Securities Act. N-14 is event-driven and transaction-specific, containing proxy/prospectus material on the reorganization, comparative fees and performance, and tax consequences. 485A24E is periodic disclosure maintenance plus incremental share registration for an ongoing fund. A fund undergoing a merger files N-14 alongside, not instead of, its 485-series amendments.

Forms N-CSR and N-CSRS — post-effectiveness shareholder reports

Form N-CSR (annual) and Form N-CSRS (semi-annual) are certified shareholder reports filed under the Investment Company Act (Rule 30e-1 / Section 30), not as Securities Act registration amendments. They contain financial statements, schedules of investments, and management discussion, but no share registration and no prospectus amendment. There is also no temporal overlap: Form N-CSR was adopted in 2003, five years after the 485A24E population closed.

Modern 485APOS / 485BPOS files datasets — present-day analogs

The current 485APOS and 485BPOS file datasets are the closest functional analogs for studying ongoing open-end fund disclosure. They cover the same fund universe and similar prospectus/SAI content. Three structural differences separate them from 485A24E: (1) no embedded 24e-2 share registration; (2) continuously growing rather than closed; and (3) materially evolved EDGAR document standards, tagging, and exhibit conventions, leaving 485A24E filings as more primitive plain-text submissions with limited structured metadata.

Boundary summary

The Form 485A24E Files Dataset is defined by three properties no other dataset carries simultaneously: (1) the Rule 485(a) delayed-effectiveness pathway, signaling substantive amendments; (2) the embedded Rule 24e-2 incremental share-registration mechanism, retired in January 1998; and (3) a fixed January 1994 – January 1998 window producing a closed corpus. Modern 485APOS replicates (1) only; 485B24E shares (2) and (3) but not (1); Rule 24f-2 notices replace (2) but carry no disclosure content; and N-1A, N-14, and N-CSR/N-CSRS sit in adjacent regulatory regimes. The dataset is best treated as a sealed historical record of a 1990s filing practice the SEC later split into separate disclosure-update and share-registration streams.

Who Uses This Dataset

Form 485A24E captures post-effective amendments filed by open-end funds between 1994 and the form's 1998 discontinuation, combining substantive prospectus updates under Rule 485(a) with share registration under Rule 24e-2. The dataset serves a defined set of users across fund research, compliance, litigation, and document machine learning.

Investment-management historians and academic researchers

Used as a primary source for how 1990s open-end funds disclosed objectives, strategies, risks, fees, and share classes before the 1998 plain-English and Form N-1A reforms. Researchers read the amended prospectus and SAI in the primary submission text, parse the fee tables, and pull adviser and underwriter compensation terms from the EX-99.B advisory and distribution agreements. Output: peer-reviewed work on fee dispersion, share-class proliferation, and 12b-1 distribution economics.

Fund-industry economists

Economists studying fund market structure reconstruct how the Rule 24e-2 redemption-offset mechanism worked, where funds netted redeemed shares against new registrations to cut fee outlays. They use cover-page registration data and fee-recital language in the primary submission, plus the cadence of 485(a) filings across a registrant's series in metadata.json, to model registration-fee economics and the compliance shift to Rule 24f-2.

Fund compliance and legal teams

Compliance officers and fund counsel use the records for precedent research when drafting current N-1A and 485(a) filings. They compare predecessor disclosure of investment policies, board approvals, advisory-fee schedules, and 12b-1 plans against present drafts, and they pull EX-99.B advisory and distribution agreements to demonstrate continuity of contractual terms. The metadata.json index supports chain-of-amendment reconstruction for a registrant.

Litigation support and expert witnesses

Experts in fund-related disputes reconstruct disclosure as it stood on a specific date for stale-disclosure, omission, or misstatement claims tied to mid-1990s events. They cite the primary submission text to establish what a reasonable investor would have seen in the prospectus and SAI, the fee tables for damages models, and the EX-27 Financial Data Schedule for portfolio composition and expense numerics. The accession number and acceptance datetime in metadata.json supply the authoritative timestamp.

Quantitative researchers

Quants extending long-horizon fund panels into a period thinly covered by commercial feeds parse fee tables for management, 12b-1, other, and total expense ratios, extract policy language from the prospectus for style and strategy classification, and ingest the EX-27 Financial Data Schedule for standardized portfolio numerics. Output: backtests of fee-performance relationships, share-class arbitrage studies, and prospectus-text factors anchored to the mid-1990s.

Regulatory historians and policy analysts

Policy researchers characterize the pre-1998 share-registration regime and quantify the shift to Rule 24f-2's declarative annual model. They use cover-page registration data and share-count and fee recitals in the primary submission, plus filing cadence in metadata.json across 485A24E, 485APOS, and 485BPOS, to analyze regulatory burden and the economic rationale for discontinuing the form.

NLP and machine-learning practitioners

ML teams use the dataset as a bounded corpus of historical prospectus language. The primary submission text fine-tunes domain models on pre-plain-English prose and trains classifiers for fee tables, risk sections, and policy language across formatting eras. The metadata.json supplies clean labels (form type, filer, date) for supervised training, and the EX-27 Financial Data Schedule provides structured numeric anchors for text-to-table extraction. The corpus also works as a held-out evaluation set for systems trained on modern filings.

Synthesis

The dataset serves a clear user base: historians and economists studying 1990s fund disclosure and registration economics, compliance and litigation professionals doing precedent research and date-anchored reconstruction, and quantitative and ML teams extending modern fund-document corpora backward. Value comes from the combination of metadata.json, primary submission text, fee tables, EX-27 schedules, and EX-99.B exhibits read together as a snapshot of a transitional regulatory period.

Specific Use Cases

The closed January 1994 – January 1998 corpus supports a small set of well-defined research and operational workflows that depend on the combination of metadata.json, the primary 485A24E body, the Rule 24e-2 fee table, EX-27 Financial Data Schedules, and the EX-99.B exhibit family.

1. Tracking 1990s mutual-fund disclosure evolution

Build a longitudinal corpus of pre-1998 prospectus and SAI prose to measure how risk language, investment-policy descriptions, and share-class disclosures changed before the SEC's 1998 plain-English and Form N-1A reforms. Pull document-1.txt for each accession, segment on <PAGE> markers and Item cross-reference headings, and key sections by registrant CIK and filedAt from metadata.json. Output: section-level diffs across successive post-effective amendments for a single fund, and aggregate readability and lexical-density trajectories for the open-end fund universe leading into the 1998 reforms.

2. Building a fund-fee historian for 1994 – 1998

Reconstruct management, 12b-1, other, and total-expense-ratio time series for the mid-1990s, a window thinly covered by commercial fee feeds. Extract the prospectus fee table from the primary submission with a column-aware parser keyed on <TABLE>/<S>/<C> blocks, cross-check against <EXPENSE-RATIO> and related tags inside each EX-27 Financial Data Schedule, and join to advisory-fee schedules in EX-99.B5 agreements. Output: a per-series, per-class fee panel anchored to filing dates from metadata.json for fee-performance and share-class-arbitrage studies.

3. Quantifying Rule 24e-2 redemption-offset economics

Estimate the fee savings funds achieved by netting prior-year redemptions against new share registrations under Rule 24e-2 before the rule's January 1998 retirement. Parse the Calculation of Registration Fee table on the cover page of document-1.txt for proposed maximum aggregate offering price, redemption-offset amount claimed, and net fee paid; aggregate by registrant and filedAt. Output: a registrant-level dataset of 24e-2 offsets and net fee outlays used to model the regulatory-burden case for moving to Rule 24f-2 indefinite registration.

4. Date-anchored litigation reconstruction

Recreate exactly what a fund's prospectus and SAI said on a specific mid-1990s date for stale-disclosure, omission, or misstatement disputes. Use accessionNo and filedAt in metadata.json as the authoritative timestamp, cite the primary submission text for the disclosure as filed, lift fee tables for damages models, and pull EX-27 portfolio cost, value, and net-asset numerics for holdings-state-on-date evidence. Output: an exhibit-ready package of source documents, accession-number citations, and extracted financial figures for expert reports.

5. NLP corpus construction for pre-plain-English filings

Use the dataset as a bounded training and evaluation corpus of pre-1998 EDGAR prose for domain-adapted language models and document-structure classifiers. The primary submission text supplies labeled sections (cover page, fee table, cross-reference sheet, prospectus, SAI, Part C) detectable from <PAGE> and EDGAR pseudo-tag patterns; metadata.json supplies clean form-type, CIK, and date labels; EX-27 tagged key/value records supply paired text-to-table targets. Output: fine-tuned models for fee-table extraction, risk-section segmentation, and held-out evaluation sets for systems trained on modern 485APOS/485BPOS filings.

6. Pre-1998 share-registration policy research

Characterize the operational footprint of the pre-Rule 24f-2 registration regime and the migration path to declarative annual share registration. Combine 485A24E filing cadence per registrant from metadata.json with cover-page amendment numbers under the 1933 and 1940 Acts, share-count and fee recitals in the registration-fee table, and powers of attorney in EX-99.B24 to map who was authorizing how many incremental registrations and how often. Output: a quantitative policy brief on registrant compliance load and the economic rationale the SEC cited when retiring Rule 24e-2 and Form 485A24E.

7. Subsidiary and adviser-relationship mapping for 1990s fund complexes

Map the contractual web of advisers, sub-advisers, distributors, and service providers across 1990s open-end fund complexes. Iterate entities[] in metadata.json for filer CIKs and IRS numbers, and parse EX-99.B5 advisory and sub-advisory agreements, EX-99.B15(C)/(D) 12b-1 distribution and shareholder-service plans, and EX-99.B11 auditor consents to extract counterparty names, fee schedules, and term clauses. Output: a relationship graph of fund-complex service providers anchored to specific amendment dates, usable for industry-concentration and conflict-of-interest research.

Dataset Access

Dataset Index JSON API: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-485a24e-files.json

This endpoint returns the dataset metadata, including name, description, last updated timestamp, earliest sample date (January 1, 1994), form types covered, container format (ZIP), and file types (TXT, JSON). It also provides the full dataset download URL and the complete list of monthly container files with per-container size, record count, updated timestamp, and download URL. Poll this endpoint to monitor which monthly containers were modified in the latest refresh run and decide which files to re-download. No API key is required to call this endpoint.

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          {
        

          2
            "datasetId": "1f13365b-9ae0-6a19-8e33-91380419598e",
        

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            "datasetDownloadUrl": "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-485a24e-files.zip",
        

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            "name": "Form 485A24E Files Dataset",
        

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            "updatedAt": "2026-04-16T08:26:40.856Z",
        

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            "earliestSampleDate": "1994-01-01",
        

          7
            "totalRecords": 1137,
        

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            "totalSize": 14566178,
        

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            "formTypes": ["485A24E"],
        

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            "containerFormat": "ZIP",
        

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            "fileTypes": ["TXT", "JSON"],
        

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            "containers": [
        

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              {
        

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                "downloadUrl": "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-485a24e-files/1997/1997-12.zip",
        

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                "key": "1997/1997-12.zip",
        

          16
                "size": 412874,
        

          17
                "records": 32,
        

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                "updatedAt": "2026-04-16T08:26:40.856Z"
        

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              }
        

          20
            ]
        

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          }
        

Download Entire Dataset: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-485a24e-files.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY

Downloads the complete dataset as a single ZIP archive covering all Form 485A24E filings submitted to EDGAR from January 1994 until the form was discontinued in January 1998. This endpoint requires an API key.

Download Single Container: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-485a24e-files/1997/1997-12.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY

Downloads a single monthly container (organized as <YYYY>/<YYYY>-<MM>.zip) instead of the full archive. Use the container URLs returned by the dataset index JSON API to fetch only the months you need. This endpoint requires an API key.

Frequently Asked Questions

What form does this dataset cover?

The dataset covers Form 485A24E, a hybrid post-effective amendment used by open-end management investment companies between January 1994 and January 1998. The form combined a Rule 485(a) substantive amendment to a Form N-1A registration statement under the Securities Act of 1933 with a Rule 24e-2 registration of additional fund shares under the Investment Company Act of 1940 on a single cover page.

What does one record in this dataset represent?

One record is a single EDGAR submission of Form 485A24E, identified by its SEC accession number and materialized on disk as one accession folder. The folder contains a metadata.json manifest plus one document-<N>.txt file per document in the original EDGAR submission — the primary 485A24E body as document-1.txt and each exhibit (EX-99.B narrative exhibits and EX-27 Financial Data Schedules) in EDGAR sequence order.

Who is required to file Form 485A24E?

The filer is the registrant — an open-end management investment company registered on Form N-1A (mutual funds), Form N-3 (separate accounts as management investment companies), or Form N-4 (separate accounts offering variable annuity contracts). Filers were typically Massachusetts business trusts, Delaware statutory trusts, or corporations, often organized as series trusts. Closed-end funds, business development companies, unit investment trusts on the N-8B-2/S-6 regime, and operating-company issuers never filed 485A24E.

What time period does the dataset cover?

The dataset covers the full lifetime of Form 485A24E on EDGAR, from general fund-filing availability in January 1994 through the form's formal discontinuation in January 1998. Because the form was retired after Rule 24f-2 amendments took effect in early 1998, the corpus is closed and will not grow with new filings.

How does this dataset differ from 485APOS and 485BPOS?

485A24E shares the Rule 485(a) delayed-effectiveness pathway with 485APOS, but adds the embedded Rule 24e-2 incremental share-registration mechanism that 485APOS does not carry. 485BPOS uses Rule 485(b) automatic effectiveness and likewise has no 24e-2 overlay. The disclosure-update half of a 485A24E migrated to 485APOS/485BPOS after January 1998, while the share-registration half migrated to standalone Form 24F-2/24F-2NT notices.

What file format is the dataset distributed in?

The dataset is distributed as monthly ZIP containers organized by year using the path <YYYY>/<YYYY>-<MM>.zip. Inside each container, accession folders contain a metadata.json (JSON) manifest and one or more document-<N>.txt (plain 7-bit ASCII) files carrying the original EDGAR document bodies in EDGAR's SGML-style markup. Image and binary attachments are excluded.

How should I parse the primary 485A24E document?

Each document-1.txt is plain ASCII with EDGAR pseudo-tags rather than HTML or XML. Logical pagination uses <PAGE> N markers, and tabular regions are wrapped in <TABLE>, optional <CAPTION>, <S> (stub column), and <C> (value columns) hints over whitespace-aligned fixed-width columns. Tables therefore require a column-aware parser, not an HTML or XML parser; EX-27 Financial Data Schedules are best treated as ordered <TAG> value records inside their <TABLE> <S> <C> wrapper.