The Form 485B24E Files Dataset is a closed historical corpus of post-effective amendments to investment-company registration statements filed on EDGAR by separate accounts organized as open-end management investment companies. Each record corresponds to one accession number — a single Rule 485(a) post-effective amendment that simultaneously registered additional shares under former Rule 24e-2 of the Investment Company Act of 1940 — and contains a structured metadata.json manifest plus the textual body of every component document in the original SGML submission. The filers are insurance-company separate accounts that funded variable annuity and variable life contracts, signing jointly with their depositor insurance companies. The dataset spans EDGAR submissions from January 1994 through January 1998, when the SEC discontinued the form following the rescission of Rule 24e-2. The corpus is distributed as monthly ZIP containers holding TXT document bodies and per-record JSON manifests.
Programmatically retrieve the full list of dataset archive files, download URLs and dataset metadata.
Dataset Index JSON API
Download the entire dataset as a single archive file.
Download Entire Dataset:
Download a single container file (e.g. monthly archive) from the dataset.
Download Single Container:
The Form 485B24E Files Dataset captures the full electronic lifespan of a single, narrowly defined SEC filing type. Form 485B24E was a hybrid post-effective amendment used by insurance separate accounts (and other open-end investment companies) to combine, in one submission, a Rule 485(a) substantive amendment to an effective registration statement on Form N-1A, Form N-3, Form N-4, or Form S-6 with a Rule 24e-2 registration of additional shares. The "24E" suffix in the form code marks that dual filing. Because the SEC rescinded Rule 24e-2 effective January 1, 1998 and discontinued the form in the same window, the dataset is a closed historical corpus rather than an ongoing feed: every accession in the corpus was filed between January 1994 and January 1998, and no new records will ever be added.
The dataset covers the entire population of Form 485B24E filings submitted to EDGAR during that window. For each accession number, the package includes a metadata manifest plus all text-bearing documents from the original EDGAR submission — image and other binary attachments are excluded. A typical filing carries the amended prospectus or statement of additional information, updated fee tables and financial highlights, the registration of additional shares, and the exhibits required under the underlying registration statement (declarations of trust, bylaws, advisory agreements, custodian agreements, distribution agreements, opinions of counsel, consents of accountants, and Article 6 Financial Data Schedules). Because Form 485B24E lived entirely within EDGAR's pre-HTML era, every document body is plain ASCII with SGML wrapper artefacts; there are no .htm or .html files anywhere in the corpus, and no XBRL or inline structured tagging. The dataset is distributed as monthly ZIP containers, with file types TXT for document bodies and JSON for per-record manifests.
One record corresponds to a single Form 485B24E submission to EDGAR — that is, one accession number filed by a separate account organized as an open-end management investment company (or by another open-end fund) as a post-effective amendment under Rule 485(a) of the Securities Act of 1933 that simultaneously registers additional shares under former Rule 24e-2 of the Investment Company Act of 1940.
Physically, a record is a folder named after the 18-digit accession number with dashes stripped (e.g. 000079792097000008 for accession 0000797920-97-000008). Inside the folder sit exactly one metadata.json describing the submission and one or more document-N.txt files holding the textual bodies of the submission's component documents in original SGML sequence order. There is no nesting beneath the accession folder — the manifest, the primary 485B24E body, and every text-bearing exhibit lie flat at the same level.
A record therefore captures a complete submission unit: the amended registration statement plus its exhibits as filed, packaged with a structured manifest. Every record reflects the pre-1998 EDGAR filing regime — ASCII/SGML only, no HTML primary documents, no inline structured tagging.
Form 485B24E is a hybrid post-effective amendment used by separate accounts of insurance companies and other open-end investment companies to do two things in a single filing:
The filed package therefore looks structurally like a fund registration statement: a cover page identifying the registrant and the underlying form (most often N-1A or S-6), the prospectus, the statement of additional information (SAI), updated fee tables and financial highlights, and the schedule of registration-statement exhibits required by the underlying form's instructions. The body is built from the same Items as the underlying form — Items 1 through 23 of Form N-1A, for instance — re-issued as amended, but the cover and signature pages identify the submission specifically as a Rule 485(a) post-effective amendment combined with a Rule 24e-2 additional-share registration. The cover typically states the amendment number, the affected 33-… and 811-… file numbers, the count of additional shares being registered under 24e-2, and the registration fee.
Every record contains two stacked layers:
metadata.json) that captures the EDGAR header information, the entity (filer) block, and the inventory of documents in the submission; anddocument-1.txt, document-2.txt, …, document-N.txt) that holds the textual body of each <DOCUMENT> element from the original SGML submission, written one document per file and numbered to match the SGML <SEQUENCE> value.document-1.txt is always the primary 485B24E body — the amended cover page, prospectus, SAI, and any inline financial highlights. Files at sequence 2 and above are the exhibits in the order the filer assembled them, ranging from a single document on a thin amendment up to roughly a dozen on heavily exhibited filings, depending on how many counsel opinions, custodian agreements, declarations of trust, bylaws, specimen contracts, financial data schedules, and consents the underlying form's exhibit table required.
Image and other binary attachments are excluded from the dataset. Where the original EDGAR submission contained <TYPE>GRAPHIC documents (logos, signature scans, fund chart graphics), no binary artefacts are written to disk; only the text-bearing documents are preserved as document-N.txt files.
metadata.json manifestmetadata.json is a single JSON object describing the submission. Its top-level fields are:
formType — fixed to "485B24E" for every record in this dataset.accessionNo — the canonical SEC accession identifier in dashed form NNNNNNNNNN-YY-NNNNNN. The folder name is the same string with dashes stripped.filedAt — ISO-8601 timestamp of EDGAR acceptance, with US Eastern offset (e.g. 1997-06-16T00:00:00-04:00).periodOfReport — the period-of-report date as carried on the EDGAR header. Occasionally absent on filings where the filer did not provide one.description — the fixed string "Form 485B24E - Post Effective Amendments".linkToFilingDetails — URL of the filing's EDGAR archive directory.linkToTxt — URL of the complete-submission .txt aggregate on EDGAR.linkToHtml — URL of the EDGAR filing-index HTML page.linkToXbrl — empty string for every record, because XBRL did not exist in the 1994-1998 EDGAR era.documentFormatFiles — ordered array describing each document inside the submission (see below).entities — array of filer entities (see below).seriesAndClassesContractsInformation — empty array. The EDGAR series-and-classes structured metadata block was introduced for newer fund filings, well after Form 485B24E was discontinued, so even multi-series trusts do not carry that block here.dataFiles — empty array; no XBRL or other companion data files exist for these submissions.id — a 32-character hex hash that identifies the record within the dataset's internal indexing.documentFormatFilesEach element in documentFormatFiles describes one component of the submission:
sequence — the SGML <SEQUENCE> number, written as a decimal string ("1", "2", …). The final element of the array carries sequence: " " (a single space) and represents EDGAR's "Complete submission text file" wrapper rather than a discrete document; it has no corresponding document-N.txt on disk.type — the SGML <TYPE> value, e.g. "485B24E" for the primary document, and exhibit codes such as "EX-99.C1", "EX-99.C2", "EX-99.5", or "EX-27".size — original byte size of the document, written as a string.description — free-text label drawn from the EDGAR header (e.g. "OPINION OF COUNSEL", "FINANCIAL DATA SCHEDULE", "BYLAWS"); occasionally absent.documentUrl — the SEC archive URL of the document.When mapping documentFormatFiles to files on disk, the trailing whole-submission entry (sequence: " ") is skipped; every other entry maps one-to-one to document-{sequence}.txt.
entitiesentities enumerates the filer or filers on the submission. A typical record has a single filer entity, but joint registrations — common in series trusts where two related funds amend together — list multiple entities, each with its own CIK and 1933- or 1940-Act file number. Per-entity fields include:
cik — Central Index Key of the filer.companyName — the registrant's legal name with a parenthetical role suffix such as "(Filer)".type — the form type of the entity's role on the submission (here "485B24E").fileNo — the 1933-Act registration number (33-…) and/or the 1940-Act investment company file number (811-…).act — "33" or "40", indicating the underlying statute for that file number.fiscalYearEnd — MMDD fiscal year-end.stateOfIncorporation, irsNo, sic, filmNo — standard EDGAR registrant attributes.document-N.txt bodiesEach document-N.txt holds the raw text that lived inside one <DOCUMENT> block of the EDGAR SGML envelope. Numbering tracks the SGML <SEQUENCE>, so document-1.txt is invariably the primary 485B24E body and subsequent files are the exhibits in filing order.
The text is mid-1990s EDGAR plain ASCII, not HTML. Visual layout is achieved with fixed-width column tables, leading-space alignment, <PAGE> form-feed markers between paginated screens, and the lightweight typesetting hints <TABLE>, <S>, <C> that EDGAR used to mark column structure in financial tables. Characters are constrained to printable 7-bit ASCII; there is no Unicode, no embedded image, no stylesheet, and no script.
document-1.txt)The primary body opens with a registration-statement cover page — typically Form N-1A or Form S-6 — that identifies the filing as a Post-Effective Amendment under the Securities Act of 1933, with the amendment number and the affected file numbers. A representative head looks like:
1
Page 1 of 6
2
3
File Nos. 33-7497 and 811-4765
4
5
SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION
6
Washington, D.C. 20549
7
8
FORM N-1A
9
10
REGISTRATION STATEMENT UNDER THE SECURITIES ACT OF 1933 [ X ]
11
12
Pre-Effective Amendment No. [ ]
13
Post-Effective Amendment No. 18 [ X ]
After the cover page, the primary body contains the components prescribed by the underlying form:
The cover page typically invokes both Rule 485(a) and Rule 24e-2 explicitly and states the count of additional shares being registered under 24e-2 along with the registration fee.
document-2.txt and beyond)Exhibits at sequence 2 and above mirror the exhibit list required by the underlying form (Item 24 of Form N-1A, Item 16 of Form S-6, and the analogous items of N-3 and N-4). The exhibit families found across this dataset include:
EX-99.C1);EX-99.C3 or EX-99.C4);EX-27, formatted in the SGML tagged-value layout characteristic of late-1990s EDGAR FDS, e.g.:
1
<TABLE> <S> <C>
2
3
<ARTICLE> 6
4
<CIK> 0000797920
5
<NAME> PREMIER NEW YORK MUNICIPAL BOND FUND
6
<SERIES>
7
<NUMBER> 001
8
<NAME> CLASS A
9
<MULTIPLIER> 1000
10
<PERIOD-TYPE> YEAR
11
<FISCAL-YEAR-END> MAR-01-1997
12
<INVESTMENTS-AT-COST> 3,084,737
13
<TOTAL-ASSETS> 3,344,342
14
<NET-ASSETS> 3,308,482
15
<INTEREST-INCOME> 276,812
16
...
17
</TABLE>
The original EDGAR submission wraps each component in an SGML <DOCUMENT> block:
1
<DOCUMENT>
2
<TYPE>EX-99.C1
3
<SEQUENCE>2
4
<FILENAME>...
5
<DESCRIPTION>OPINION OF COUNSEL
6
<TEXT>
7
... document body ...
8
</TEXT>
9
</DOCUMENT>
The dataset splitter writes the body of each <DOCUMENT> into its own document-N.txt, but it is conservative on the trailing edge. Many files retain the closing </TEXT></DOCUMENT> markers and may include a subsequent <DOCUMENT> header and a fragment of the next exhibit's body, ultimately ending with </SEC-DOCUMENT> and the -----END PRIVACY-ENHANCED MESSAGE----- MIME trailer. Cleaner records carry no embedded SGML markers at all. A typical residual tail looks like:
1
</TEXT>
2
</DOCUMENT>
3
<DOCUMENT>
4
<TYPE>EX-99.C2
5
<SEQUENCE>3
6
7
June 24, 1997
8
PaineWebber Incorporated
9
...
10
</DOCUMENT>
11
</SEC-DOCUMENT>
12
-----END PRIVACY-ENHANCED MESSAGE-----
Downstream consumers should treat each document-N.txt as "starts at the body of sequence N and may carry trailing fragments of subsequent documents and the envelope tail," and either tolerate the residue or strip on <DOCUMENT>, </TEXT>, </SEC-DOCUMENT>, and the MIME-trailer markers when isolating one document's body.
Each record includes:
metadata.json manifest with EDGAR header data, document inventory, and entity (filer) details;document-{sequence}.txt;<TYPE> code, sequence, byte size, description, and archive URL for each document, captured in documentFormatFiles.The following are not stored on disk inside the record:
<TYPE>GRAPHIC (or analogous binary) documents have those documents omitted from the on-disk file set.documentFormatFiles with sequence: " " represents EDGAR's complete-submission text wrapper and is not materialized as a document-N.txt; the per-document files together stand in for it.seriesAndClassesContractsInformation array is empty for every record. EDGAR's series and class identifiers for investment companies were introduced after this form was discontinued, so even multi-series trusts do not carry the structured block; series and class identification appears only in the free text of the body and exhibits.33-… file number. The text of those earlier documents is not duplicated into the current record; reconstructing a fully self-contained fund history requires following the references back through prior accessions.Form 485B24E exists in a tightly bounded historical window. The form was a vehicle for combining a Rule 485(a) post-effective amendment with a Rule 24e-2 additional-share registration; on January 1, 1998 the SEC rescinded Rule 24e-2 and the form was discontinued in the same window. The dataset's coverage therefore stops in January 1998 by construction, not by sampling choice.
Within the active period (January 1994 through January 1998), the substantive contents of the filings tracked the contemporaneous instructions to the underlying registration form (most often Form N-1A for open-end funds and Form S-6 for unit-investment-trust separate accounts). Two structural notes matter for interpreting the corpus:
<letter>``<digit> family (e.g. EX-99.C1 for opinion of counsel), so the same logical exhibit type may appear under different <TYPE> codes across older versus newer records.Because the form was retired before the SEC's 21st-century structured-data and HTML/iXBRL initiatives, none of the modern content innovations — series/class identifiers, Risk/Return Summary inline tagging, the 2009 Form N-1A renumbering and summary-prospectus rules, or interactive-data exhibits — appear in any record. A Form 485B24E record is, by definition, a snapshot of fund registration practice as it stood under the pre-1998 rules.
Form 485B24E lived entirely within EDGAR's pre-HTML era. From its earliest filings in 1994 through the form's January 1998 discontinuation, EDGAR accepted only ASCII/SGML primary documents for these submissions; HTML primary documents were not yet permitted. The on-disk content reflects this directly: every document-N.txt is plain ASCII with SGML wrapper artefacts, fixed-width tables, <PAGE> form-feed markers, and <TABLE>/<S>/<C> typesetting hints. There are no .htm or .html files anywhere in the corpus. The only structured layer is the metadata.json manifest produced for this dataset, which sits alongside the unmodified ASCII bodies.
entities — joint amendments by related funds in the same trust complex are not unusual — but the folder still contains a single set of documents covering all joined registrants. Treat entities as a one-to-many relationship from record to CIK.documentFormatFiles[i].sequence maps directly to document-{sequence}.txt on disk. The trailing entry whose sequence is " " is the whole-submission wrapper and has no on-disk file.document-N.txt files end with </TEXT></DOCUMENT> and may include a partial <DOCUMENT> <TYPE>... <SEQUENCE>... header and body fragment from the next exhibit, sometimes followed by </SEC-DOCUMENT> and the -----END PRIVACY-ENHANCED MESSAGE----- MIME trailer. Truncating on these markers is the most reliable way to isolate one document's body.documentFormatFiles inventory implies. Cross-referencing <TYPE> and description against the on-disk sequence numbers is the most reliable way to confirm which exhibits are present.linkToXbrl, dataFiles, and seriesAndClassesContractsInformation are present in the manifest but always empty for this dataset; their presence is structural, reflecting schema sharing across newer SEC datasets where those fields do carry data.33-… (1933 Act) and 811-… (1940 Act) file numbers on the cover page are the durable anchors that link successive amendments of the same fund; pairing entities[i].fileNo with entities[i].cik is the standard way to reconnect a 485B24E record to its registration-statement lineage.The filer is an insurance company separate account registered with the SEC as an open-end management investment company under the Investment Company Act of 1940. These separate accounts are segregated asset pools established by life insurers to fund variable annuity contracts and variable life insurance policies. The registrant on the filing is the separate account itself, signed and submitted jointly with its depositor insurance company (the sponsoring insurer or an affiliated insurance subsidiary).
Excluded from the filer population:
Variable contract owners are the economic beneficiaries of the registration but are never filers.
Form 485B24E was a post-effective amendment filed at the intersection of two statutes:
Two specific rules define the form:
The "24E" suffix marks the dual filing: a Rule 485(a) amendment that simultaneously registers additional shares under Rule 24e-2.
A 485B24E filing was generated when a separate account with an effective registration statement needed to do both of the following in one submission:
The trigger is discretionary and transactional, not periodic. There is no fixed deadline or external event. Filing cadence varies sharply across registrants — some separate accounts filed multiple 485B24E amendments during the form's life, others filed rarely or never.
The dataset covers EDGAR submissions from January 1994 through January 1998, the form's full electronic lifespan. Earlier coverage reflects the EDGAR phase-in for investment companies; equivalent pre-EDGAR paper amendments are not included.
The SEC discontinued Form 485B24E in January 1998 following the rescission of Rule 24e-2. After that date, no new 485B24E filings were accepted. Open-end funds shifted to indefinite share registration under Rule 24f-2 (with Form 24F-2NT notices), and ongoing post-effective amendments moved to Form 485APOS (Rule 485(a)) and Form 485BPOS (Rule 485(b)).
Form 485B24E sits inside the family of post-effective amendments to investment company registration statements. Its closest neighbors are the other Rule 485 amendment variants, the parallel additional-share registration mechanisms under Rules 24e-2 and 24f-2, and the underlying N-series registration forms. Because the form was discontinued in January 1998 with the rescission of Rule 24e-2, several neighbors remain active datasets while 485B24E is a closed historical corpus covering 1994 through early 1998.
Form 485A24E is the direct sibling. Both filings combined a Rule 485(a) substantive post-effective amendment with registration of additional shares under Rule 24e-2; they differ only in form-code variant and procedural posture during the mid-1990s. For a complete view of 24e-2 amendment activity, the two must be treated as a paired set. Both ceased in January 1998.
Form 485B24F is the structural analog tied to Rule 24f-2 rather than 24e-2. The mechanical distinction is decisive: 24e-2 required a specified number of additional shares to be registered per filing, while 24f-2 allowed open-end funds to declare an indefinite number with annual reconciliation. 485B24E captures the per-filing share-count regime; 485B24F captures the declarative regime that absorbed the function after 1998.
Form 485APOS is a Rule 485(a) substantive amendment without the embedded 24e-2 share registration. It changes disclosures, fee structures, or investment policies but does not by itself register new shares. 485APOS remains active and open-ended; 485B24E is closed at January 1998.
Form 485BPOS is the Rule 485(b) variant for non-material updates that take effect automatically (annual financial refreshes, routine prospectus updates). Despite the "B" in 485B24E, that suffix denotes the historical 24e-2 sub-form, not Rule 485(b). 485BPOS does not register additional shares and continues uninterrupted past 1998.
Form 24F-2NT is the successor mechanism for additional-share registration after Rule 24e-2 was rescinded. It is a standalone annual notice that reconciles share sales and pays fees, decoupled from any prospectus amendment. Pre-1998 share-registration research requires 485B24E (and 485A24E, 485B24F); post-1998 research requires 24F-2NT.
Forms N-1A, N-3, N-4, N-6 are the underlying registration statements that 485B24E amends — particularly N-3 given the separate-account focus, with N-4 and N-6 covering variable annuity and variable life separate accounts and N-1A covering mutual funds. The N-series provides the structural baseline; 485B24E provides the iterative amendments. The two are complementary, not substitutes.
Form 485B24E is distinct because it is the only dataset that captures the simultaneous combination of a 485(a) substantive amendment and a 24e-2 incremental share registration, filed by separate accounts during a four-year window that ended with the rescission of Rule 24e-2. For full coverage of the 24e-2 amendment family, pair it with 485A24E; for the parallel 24f-2 track in the same era, pair it with 485B24F; for the underlying disclosure baseline, pair it with the relevant N-series registration. No active post-1998 dataset replicates its content.
Because Form 485B24E was discontinued in January 1998 after Rule 24e-2 was rescinded, the user base for this dataset is concentrated in roles that reconstruct, audit, or study legacy variable-products disclosure rather than monitor live filings.
In-house counsel and compliance officers at carriers issuing variable annuity and variable life contracts use the dataset to reconstruct the registration history of specific separate accounts whose contracts remain in force. They trace successive amendments tied to a contract series and confirm which share classes and features were registered under which filing. The prospectus body, statement of additional information, fee tables, and signature blocks are the load-bearing fields. Outputs include continuity-of-disclosure memos and responses to regulator or contract-holder inquiries.
In suitability, fee-disclosure, and breach-of-contract disputes over legacy variable annuities, litigation specialists and forensic accountants need the prospectus and fee disclosure that was effective when a contract was sold. They work primarily with fee tables, expense examples, financial highlights, and the EX-27 financial data schedule, comparing disclosed charges across successive 485B24E amendments to establish what a contract holder saw at any point in the 1994 to 1998 window. Outputs include exhibits, expert reports, and reconciliations against internal carrier records.
Examiners and enforcement staff handling conduct from the mid-1990s retrieve the exact text of post-effective amendments, the EX-27 schedule, and EX-99 exhibits on file when a contract was issued or marketed. They focus on registrant and depositor identity, fee and expense disclosure, and the additional-shares language under Rule 24e-2. The dataset supports examination workpapers and referral memoranda.
Auditors of long-running separate accounts and their depositor carriers reconcile fee disclosure, financial highlights, and registered share counts in internal records against what was filed publicly. They lean on financial highlights tables, the EX-27 schedule, and the additional-shares registration language. The dataset feeds audit workpapers, restatement analyses, and reconciliation memos.
Researchers studying the variable-products regime, the Investment Company Act amendments of the 1990s, and the operation of Rule 24e-2 use the dataset as a complete primary-source corpus for the rule's final years. Cover pages, prospectus contract features and investment options, and the additional-shares language matter most. Output is scholarly articles, regulatory histories, and case studies on share-registration practice before the current framework.
Analysts at industry-research and policy functions studying separate-account structures, variable annuity asset distribution, and the shape of the late-1990s variable-products market use the dataset as a structured snapshot of who filed what, for which accounts, and at what frequency. Registrant metadata, depositor identity, funding option lineups, and fee-table changes across amendments drive the analysis. Outputs include industry studies and historical baselines for current variable-products work.
Teams constructing long-run datasets of post-effective amendments combine 485B24E with 485APOS, 485BPOS, and related forms so the historical record from 1994 forward is not truncated by the 1998 discontinuation. They consume per-accession JSON metadata, document-level submission structure, the EX-27 schedule for structured financial fields, and prospectus text for unstructured retrieval. The dataset supports parsing pipelines, entity resolution linking separate accounts to depositors over time, and disclosure-history features for downstream models.
Teams building retrieval-augmented systems over investment company disclosure index 485B24E filings alongside later amendments to cover the 1994 to 1998 window. Prospectus body, SAI, fee tables, and exhibits are the indexed units, retrievable by contract series and effective date. The dataset supports historical question-answering and drafting assistance for current amendments that mirror legacy structure, typically inside carrier and law-firm knowledge tools.
The use cases below reflect concrete workflows the Form 485B24E dataset directly supports, given its closed 1994 to 1998 archive of post-effective amendments paired with structured per-accession metadata and the full text of each component document.
In suitability, fee-disclosure, and breach-of-contract litigation over variable annuities sold during the 24e-2 era, the team needs the exact prospectus that was effective on the sale date. Filter records by entities[].cik and the 33-… file number for the relevant separate account, sort by filedAt, and extract the fee table, expense example, and financial highlights from document-1.txt of the amendment in force at that date. The output is an exhibit-ready PDF or text reproduction with provenance traceable to a specific accession number.
Carrier legal and compliance teams maintaining legacy contracts need to know how many shares of each class were registered, when, and under which amendment. Iterate documentFormatFiles for type "485B24E", parse the cover page of document-1.txt for the Rule 24e-2 additional-share count and registration fee, and key by entities[].fileNo. The output is a per-fund share-registration ledger covering 1994 through January 1998 that ties into the 24F-2NT regime that succeeded it.
Auditors and forensic accountants reconstruct historical financial highlights, total assets, investments at cost, and per-class expense ratios for late-1990s separate accounts. Locate exhibits with type "EX-27" in documentFormatFiles, read the corresponding document-N.txt, and parse the SGML tagged-value block (<INVESTMENTS-AT-COST>, <NET-ASSETS>, <INTEREST-INCOME>, etc.) into a structured table. The output is a panel of fund-year financials that can be reconciled against carrier general-ledger extracts.
Examiners, expert witnesses, and academic researchers want to identify exactly when a fee changed, an investment policy was rewritten, or a risk disclosure was added. Group accessions by entities[].fileNo (33-…), order by filedAt, and run text diffs over the prospectus and SAI sections of document-1.txt. The output is a chronology of substantive disclosure changes per fund, with each change anchored to a specific accession and amendment number from the cover page.
Industry analysts and historians studying late-1990s adviser, custodian, and distributor relationships pull the actual agreements out of the exhibit attachments. Use documentFormatFiles[].description and type codes (e.g. EX-99.5, EX-99.C1) to locate investment advisory agreements, sub-advisory agreements, custodian agreements, distribution agreements, and 12b-1 plans, then read those document-N.txt files and strip the trailing </TEXT></DOCUMENT> residue. The output is a contract corpus keyed to fund, depositor, and effective date for adviser-relationship and fee-trend analysis.
Data engineering teams build unified historical panels of fund post-effective amendments that span the 1998 form-discontinuation boundary. Ingest 485B24E records alongside 485APOS, 485BPOS, 485A24E, and 485B24F, normalize on accessionNo, filedAt, entities[].cik, and entities[].fileNo, and treat the empty seriesAndClassesContractsInformation and linkToXbrl fields as expected nulls for the pre-1998 era. The output is an unbroken filing-event series feeding entity-resolution, disclosure-feature, and event-study pipelines.
Retrieval and LLM teams at carriers and law firms build knowledge bases covering the full lifetime of variable contracts still in force. Chunk document-1.txt into prospectus, SAI, and financial-highlights sections, attach metadata (accessionNo, filedAt, entities[].cik, entities[].fileNo, amendment number parsed from the cover), and index alongside later 485APOS and 485BPOS records for the same file numbers. The output is a contract-aware retrieval layer that answers historical questions and drafts current amendments by reference to the legacy text.
The Form 485B24E Files Dataset is a closed historical collection covering filings from January 1994 to January 1998, distributed as monthly ZIP containers. There are three ways to access the data.
Dataset Index JSON API: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-485b24e-files.json
This endpoint returns dataset-level metadata (name, description, last updated timestamp, earliest sample date, total records, total size, form types, container format, and file types) along with the full archive download URL and the complete list of monthly container files. Each container entry includes its key, size, record count, last updated timestamp, and direct download URL. Because this dataset's source form was discontinued, the container list is fixed, but the updatedAt timestamps can still change when historical filings are reprocessed. Polling this endpoint lets you detect which containers were modified in the most recent refresh and download only those. No API key is required to query this endpoint.
Example response:
1
{
2
"datasetId": "1f13365b-9ae0-698e-a1c2-4bf478a9eed5",
3
"datasetDownloadUrl": "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-485b24e-files.zip",
4
"name": "Form 485B24E Files Dataset",
5
"updatedAt": "2026-04-15T11:55:34.885Z",
6
"earliestSampleDate": "1994-01-01",
7
"totalRecords": 10555,
8
"totalSize": 130063763,
9
"formTypes": ["485B24E"],
10
"containerFormat": "ZIP",
11
"fileTypes": ["TXT", "JSON"],
12
"containers": [
13
{
14
"downloadUrl": "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-485b24e-files/1998/1998-01.zip",
15
"key": "1998/1998-01.zip",
16
"size": 2150400,
17
"records": 180,
18
"updatedAt": "2026-04-15T11:55:34.885Z"
19
}
20
]
21
}
Download Entire Dataset: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-485b24e-files.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY
Downloads the complete dataset as a single ZIP archive containing all monthly containers from 1994 through January 1998. This endpoint requires a valid API key.
Download Single Container: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-485b24e-files/1997/1997-06.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY
Downloads one monthly container ZIP. Substitute the desired year and month from the containers[].key values returned by the index JSON. This endpoint requires a valid API key.
The dataset covers Form 485B24E, a discontinued SEC form used as a hybrid post-effective amendment that combined a Rule 485(a) substantive amendment with a Rule 24e-2 registration of additional shares. It applied to separate accounts organized as open-end management investment companies under the Investment Company Act of 1940.
One record corresponds to a single Form 485B24E submission to EDGAR — that is, one accession number — filed as a post-effective amendment under Rule 485(a) that simultaneously registers additional shares under Rule 24e-2. Each record is a folder named after the accession number containing one metadata.json manifest and one or more document-N.txt files for the primary 485B24E body and its text-bearing exhibits.
The filer is an insurance company separate account registered with the SEC as an open-end management investment company, signing jointly with its depositor insurance company. These separate accounts fund variable annuity contracts and variable life insurance policies. Closed-end funds, UIT-organized separate accounts (which use N-4 / N-6), ordinary operating companies, and most non-insurance retail mutual funds are excluded from the filer population.
The dataset covers EDGAR submissions from January 1994 through January 1998, the form's full electronic lifespan. The corpus is closed: the SEC discontinued Form 485B24E in January 1998 following the rescission of Rule 24e-2, so no new records are added.
The dataset is distributed as monthly ZIP containers. Inside each accession folder, document bodies are plain ASCII TXT files (document-1.txt, document-2.txt, …) that preserve the original SGML wrapper artefacts of pre-1998 EDGAR, and the manifest is a JSON file (metadata.json). There are no HTML, XBRL, or binary image files in the corpus.
Form 485APOS is a Rule 485(a) substantive amendment without an embedded share registration, and Form 485BPOS is the Rule 485(b) variant for non-material updates that take effect automatically; both remain active filing types. Form 485B24E uniquely combined a 485(a) substantive amendment with a Rule 24e-2 additional-share registration in a single submission, and it ceased in January 1998 when Rule 24e-2 was rescinded.
Substantive post-effective amendment activity moved to Form 485APOS (Rule 485(a)) and Form 485BPOS (Rule 485(b)), and additional-share registration shifted from Rule 24e-2 to Rule 24f-2's indefinite registration regime, reconciled annually via Form 24F-2NT notices. Pre-1998 share-registration research therefore requires 485B24E (paired with 485A24E and 485B24F); post-1998 research uses 24F-2NT.