Form 6B NTC Files Dataset

The Form 6B NTC Files Dataset packages every EDGAR accession filed under form type 6B NTC — the public notice the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission issues when an employees' securities company applies for exemptive relief under Section 6(b) of the Investment Company Act of 1940. Each record corresponds to one accession and is materialized as a folder containing a structured metadata.json descriptor plus the original EDGAR submission documents, which for this form type are overwhelmingly a single Commission-authored PDF carrying the notice text. Because Form 6B NTC is administratively issued by the SEC rather than filed by an outside registrant, every accession sits under EDGAR's reserved CIK 9999999997, while the operative applicant — the employees' securities company and any sponsoring affiliates — is identified separately in the metadata entities array. Coverage begins on April 1, 2009, the point at which these Commission notices began appearing systematically on EDGAR under this form code, and runs to the present. The dataset is distributed as a ZIP archive of nested per-month ZIP archives, with PDF and JSON as the only file types.

Dataset APIs

Dataset Files

What This Dataset Contains

The dataset assembles the complete EDGAR population of Form 6B NTC accessions from April 2009 forward. Form 6B NTC is the EDGAR form-type tag the Commission uses for the "Notice" stage of a Section 6(b) exemptive proceeding involving an employees' securities company. The substantive document is a public notice authored by the SEC's Division of Investment Management. It identifies the applicant employees' securities company (and any co-applicants such as the sponsor, general partner, or affiliated investment adviser), summarizes the nature and scope of the exemptive relief requested, cites the specific provisions of the 1940 Act and the rules thereunder from which exemption is sought, references any prior or related Commission orders on which the applicants rely, sets out the conditions the applicants have proposed to accept, and announces a comment period together with instructions for hearing requests. The notice carries an Investment Company Act release number (e.g. IC-XXXXX) and is signed in the name of the Secretary of the Commission. The procedural basis is paragraph (b) of Section 6 of the 1940 Act, which authorizes the Commission, by order on application, to exempt any employees' securities company from any provision of the Act or the rules thereunder, to the extent consistent with the protection of investors.

The dataset captures every such notice for the covered window, packaging the structured metadata header alongside the non-image documents that accompanied the original EDGAR submission. Because Form 6B NTC is an administrative SEC-issued notice form, filing volume is intrinsically very low, and most monthly archives are empty or carry just one accession folder. The container format is ZIP and the file types found in the dataset are PDF and JSON.

Content Structure of a Single Record

1. What one record represents

One record in the Form 6B NTC Files dataset is a single EDGAR accession of form type 6B NTC — a public notice issued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announcing that an exemptive application under Section 6(b) of the Investment Company Act of 1940 has been filed by an employees' securities company, and inviting interested persons to request a hearing or submit comments before the Commission acts on that application. Each record corresponds to exactly one EDGAR accession number and is materialized as one accession-level folder containing a structured metadata descriptor together with the original submission documents that accompanied the accession on EDGAR. Because Form 6B NTC is administratively issued by the Commission rather than filed by a registrant in the ordinary sense, every record reflects a dual identity: the SEC as the issuing party of the notice and the employees' securities company as the underlying applicant whose request triggered the proceeding.

2. What the underlying filing is

Form 6B NTC is the EDGAR form-type tag the Commission uses for the "Notice" stage of a Section 6(b) exemptive proceeding involving an employees' securities company. The substantive document is a public notice authored by the SEC's Division of Investment Management. It identifies the applicant employees' securities company (and any co-applicants such as the sponsor, general partner, or affiliated investment adviser), summarizes the nature and scope of the exemptive relief requested, cites the specific provisions of the 1940 Act and the rules thereunder from which exemption is sought, references any prior or related Commission orders on which the applicants rely, sets out the conditions the applicants have proposed to accept, and announces a comment period together with instructions for hearing requests. The notice carries an Investment Company Act release number (e.g. IC-XXXXX) and is signed in the name of the Secretary of the Commission. The procedural basis is paragraph (b) of Section 6 of the 1940 Act, which authorizes the Commission, by order on application, to exempt any employees' securities company from any provision of the Act or the rules thereunder, to the extent consistent with the protection of investors.

3. Container and record layout

The dataset is distributed as a single ZIP archive containing nested per-month ZIP archives organized as /<YYYY>/<YYYY>-<MM>.zip. Each monthly ZIP, when expanded, exposes a top-level directory named for the same year-month (<YYYY>-<MM>/). Inside that directory, every Form 6B NTC accession appears as its own sub-folder whose name is the 18-digit EDGAR accession number with no dashes (for example 999999999725002350, corresponding to the dashed form 9999999997-25-002350). One such accession folder is one dataset record.

Each accession folder contains:

• exactly one metadata.json describing the filing in structured form, and
• one or more original EDGAR submission documents — for Form 6B NTC, this is overwhelmingly a single PDF carrying the SEC's notice text, optionally accompanied by the concatenated complete-submission text bundle.

Image files that may have been part of the original EDGAR submission are excluded by design. There are no HTML renditions, no SGML wrapper artifacts surfaced as separate files, and no series-and-class metadata payloads inside an accession folder. The file types found in the dataset are PDF and JSON.

Filing volume is intrinsically very low: Form 6B NTC is an administrative SEC-issued notice form, so most monthly archives are empty or carry just one accession folder.

4. The metadata.json descriptor

metadata.json is a flat JSON object that captures the EDGAR header information and document manifest for one 6B NTC accession. The fields that carry intentional meaning for this form type are:

• formType — the literal string "6B NTC".
• accessionNo — the dashed 18-digit accession number (e.g. 9999999997-25-002350). The leading 10-digit segment is the filer CIK assigned by EDGAR to the submission; for 6B NTC that segment is always 9999999997, EDGAR's reserved placeholder for SEC-originated administrative filings.
• filedAt — ISO-8601 timestamp with timezone offset (e.g. 2025-05-15T14:16:01-04:00) marking when the notice was disseminated on EDGAR.
• description — human-readable label generated by EDGAR, typically of the shape "Form 6B NTC - 40-6B Notice - Item <YYYYMMDD>".
• linkToFilingDetails — direct URL to the primary PDF notice on sec.gov.
• linkToTxt — URL to the complete EDGAR submission text file for the accession.
• linkToHtml — URL to the EDGAR filing index page.
• linkToXbrl — empty string (Form 6B NTC has never been an XBRL-bearing form).
• documentFormatFiles — an array of document descriptors. Each descriptor includes sequence, size (bytes, encoded as a string), documentUrl, type, and an optional description. The notice PDF appears as the primary entry; the complete submission text bundle, when present, is appended as an entry with a blank type and the description "Complete submission text file".
• entities — an array describing the parties on the EDGAR header. For 6B NTC, the substantive entry is the applicant employees' securities company. Per-entity fields include companyName (often suffixed with (Filer)), cik, fileNo (the Investment Company Act file number, typically of the 813-XXXXX series reserved for employees' securities companies and similar 1940 Act applicants), filmNo (EDGAR film number), type (form-type tag), act (statute code, "98" denoting the 1940 Act), stateOfIncorporation, and fiscalYearEnd (MMDD).
• items — an array of EDGAR item-tag strings. For 6B NTC, items take the shape "Item <YYYYMMDD>:" and reflect the SEC release date associated with the notice; the same tag may appear duplicated due to EDGAR header repetition.
• seriesAndClassesContractsInformation — present in the schema but empty for this form type, since employees' securities company exemption notices do not enumerate registered investment company series or share classes.
• dataFiles — empty.
• id — an opaque internal identifier hash for the record.

Document-level size values are emitted as strings rather than numbers, which matters for any downstream code that arithmetically aggregates byte counts.

5. The two-CIK identity pattern

Form 6B NTC accessions exhibit a characteristic two-CIK pattern that downstream consumers must handle correctly. The accession number itself begins with 9999999997, EDGAR's reserved placeholder CIK used for filings that originate with the SEC rather than with an outside registrant — release notices, orders, and other Commission-issued documents are routinely lodged under this CIK so that the accession-number namespace remains coherent. The substantive applicant identity is carried separately in the first element of the entities array: entities[0].cik is the real CIK of the employees' securities company that filed the underlying Section 6(b) application, and entities[0].fileNo is its Investment Company Act file number (typically the 813- series). Treating 9999999997 as the issuer is an error; it is a procedural marker, and the operative applicant identification is always to be read from entities[0].

6. The PDF notice document

The body document is a PDF reproducing the Commission's public notice. Its layout follows the standard Investment Company Act release format and is highly stable across filings:

1. A masthead identifying the Securities and Exchange Commission and the relevant release series (Investment Company Act of 1940 release number, sometimes paired with a related order release number when issued together).
2. A caption block naming the applicant employees' securities company and any co-applicants, along with the file number for the proceeding.
3. An "AGENCY", "ACTION", and "SUMMARY" preamble in the style of a Federal Register notice, identifying the SEC as the agency, characterizing the action as a notice of an application for exemption, and summarizing the relief requested.
4. An "APPLICANTS" section identifying the applicant entities in detail (legal name, organizational form, jurisdiction, sponsor relationship).
5. A "RELEVANT PROVISIONS" or "RELEVANT ACT SECTIONS" section enumerating the sections of the Investment Company Act and rules thereunder from which exemptive relief is sought.
6. A "SUMMARY OF APPLICATION" describing the relief requested and the principal terms — typically permitting the employees' securities company to operate as a private investment vehicle for partners, employees, directors, officers, or consultants of a sponsoring organization without complying with specified provisions of the 1940 Act, subject to negotiated conditions.
7. A "FILING DATE" line giving the date the application was filed and the dates of any amendments.
8. A "HEARING OR NOTIFICATION OF HEARING" block setting the deadline by which interested persons may request a hearing and the manner of service for such requests.
9. An "ADDRESSES" block giving the Commission's mailing address and the applicants' counsel addresses.
10. A "FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT" block naming the Division of Investment Management staff responsible for the matter (attorney-adviser and branch chief).
11. A "SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION" or "APPLICANTS' REPRESENTATIONS" section — typically the longest part of the notice — laying out the factual representations supporting the application: the structure of the employees' securities company, the eligibility criteria and qualifications of permissible investors, the role and affiliation of the sponsor, the investment program, the proposed conditions, and the legal analysis tying each piece of relief to the protection-of-investors standard in Section 6(b).
12. A signature block, signed in the name of the Secretary of the Commission or by the Division of Investment Management on the Commission's behalf, with the release date.

Because the document is the Commission's own notice rather than an investor-prepared registration document, the same set of headings recurs in essentially the same order across filings, with variation concentrated in the substantive narrative and the negotiated conditions.

7. Included content

Each record packages the structured metadata.json descriptor plus all non-image documents that accompanied the original EDGAR submission. In the great majority of 6B NTC cases this resolves to the notice PDF and, where present in the original submission, the concatenated complete-submission text bundle referenced in documentFormatFiles.

8. Excluded or separate content

The record does not include the underlying Form 40-APP or Form 40-6B exemptive application that the employees' securities company filed and that the notice references — those are separate EDGAR accessions under their own form types. The record likewise does not include the eventual order ("6B ORDR") that the Commission issues after the comment period, which is filed as a distinct accession. Image files (scanned exhibit imagery, signature page bitmaps, agency seals attached as image components) are stripped from the accession folder. EDGAR's SGML header wrapper is not surfaced as a standalone artifact; its semantically meaningful contents are flattened into metadata.json. The seriesAndClassesContractsInformation block is structurally present but always empty for this form, since the notice concerns a Section 6(b) exemption proceeding rather than a registered open-end fund series filing.

9. Structural stability since 2009

Coverage begins in April 2009. By that point EDGAR had standardized on machine-acceptable electronic submissions for Investment Company Act administrative notices, and the Commission had already adopted PDF as the canonical body-document format for its own release notices. As a result, the record anatomy has been essentially stable across the entire coverage window: an accession folder under EDGAR's reserved SEC filer CIK, a metadata header surfacing the applicant's identity in the entities array, and a PDF notice authored in the standard Investment Company Act release format. The substantive notice template — masthead, caption, AGENCY/ACTION/SUMMARY preamble, applicants, relevant Act provisions, summary of application, filing date, hearing block, addresses, contact, applicants' representations, and signature — has likewise remained consistent because it tracks the long-standing structure used by the Division of Investment Management for all 1940 Act notices. There has been no migration of Form 6B NTC body documents to HTML or to inline XBRL; PDF has been the body format throughout, and JSON metadata is the dataset's structured layer over that body.

10. Interpretation notes

A handful of nuances matter when working with these records.

• Never read the leading 9999999997 segment of the accession number, or the equivalent header CIK, as the registrant identity. It is EDGAR's reserved CIK for SEC-originated administrative filings; the operative applicant identification lives in entities[0] together with its 813- series Investment Company Act file number.
• The items array carries Item <YYYYMMDD>: markers tied to the SEC release date and may appear duplicated in the header. Treat duplication as a header artifact rather than as semantic multiplicity.
• The notice document is a Commission-authored PDF, and earlier-vintage notices may have been distributed as scanned or rasterized output. Machine extraction from the body should anticipate variability in OCR fidelity even though the textual structure of the notice itself is highly predictable.
• Several fields in the metadata schema are present but empty for this form type by design (linkToXbrl, dataFiles, seriesAndClassesContractsInformation); their presence reflects the shared EDGAR metadata schema, not omitted content.
• Document size values are stringly typed and must be coerced before arithmetic.
• A complete picture of any individual Section 6(b) proceeding requires joining the 6B NTC record to the corresponding application accession (40-APP or 40-6B) and to the subsequent 6B ORDR order accession, both of which are separate records outside this dataset. The Investment Company Act file number in entities[0].fileNo is the most reliable join key across the three stages.

Who Files or Publishes This Dataset, and When

1. The issuer is the SEC, not a registrant

Form 6B NTC is unusual on EDGAR because the publisher is the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission itself, not a public company, fund, adviser, or insider. Each record is a public notice issued by the Commission that an application for exemptive relief under Section 6(b) of the Investment Company Act of 1940 has been received and is under consideration. The records appear under EDGAR's reserved CIK 9999999997, the placeholder used for Commission-issued notices and orders that are not attributable to an operating registrant.

2. The underlying applicant population: employees' securities companies

The substantive subject of each notice is an applicant, not the SEC. Section 6(b) applies specifically to an "employees' securities company" (ESC) — a pooled investment vehicle organized for the partners, directors, officers, employees, or consultants of a sponsoring firm. Sponsors are typically investment advisers, broker-dealers, private equity firms, asset managers, law firms, or other professional organizations.

An ESC is technically an investment company under the Act and would otherwise be subject to the full registration regime that applies to mutual funds and similar vehicles. Section 6(b) authorizes the Commission to exempt an ESC from any or all provisions of the Act, conditional on terms consistent with investor protection. The applicants on the underlying filing are the ESC itself and, typically, the sponsoring firm and any general partner, managing member, or affiliated investment manager.

3. Triggering event: a Section 6(b) exemptive application requiring notice-and-comment

Each Form 6B NTC is triggered by the filing of an underlying exemptive application by an ESC and its affiliates. The Investment Company Act requires the Commission to give public notice and an opportunity for hearing before granting such relief; the 6B NTC is that statutorily required notice. The sequence is:

1. The ESC and its sponsoring affiliates file an application for exemptive relief under Section 6(b).
2. The SEC's Division of Investment Management reviews the application and negotiates conditions.
3. When staff is prepared to recommend action, the Commission issues the notice (Form 6B NTC), specifying a deadline by which interested persons may request a hearing.
4. If no hearing is ordered, the Commission issues a separate order granting the relief, usually with conditions.

The notice is the predicate to the order, not a discretionary publication. Each record corresponds to one application proceeding and carries an Investment Company Act release number tying it to the subsequent order.

4. Cadence

There is no periodic schedule. Issuance is purely event-driven and tied to the small population of ESCs seeking Section 6(b) relief. Each grant typically covers a defined series of related vehicles sponsored by one firm, so the absolute volume is low. The April 2009 start date reflects when these Commission notices began appearing systematically on EDGAR under this form code, not the origin of the underlying obligation, which has existed since enactment of the Act in 1940.

5. Important distinctions

• The applicant ESC and its affiliates do not file these notices themselves. A search by ESC name or CIK will not surface the records; they sit under SEC notice CIK 9999999997.
• The form type "6B NTC" is reserved for Section 6(b) notices. Notices for applications under Sections 6(c), 17(b), 17(d), or other exemptive provisions appear under different form codes (commonly in the 40-APP or related notice/order families).
• The 6B NTC is distinct from the underlying exemptive application (filed by the ESC under separate form types) and from the Commission's subsequent exemptive order granting relief (a separate release).
• An ESC is distinct from a registered investment company (mutual fund, ETF, closed-end fund, BDC), from a Section 3(c)(1) or Section 3(c)(7) private fund, and from a Section 3(c)(11) collective trust. Those vehicles do not need Section 6(b) relief and do not generate 6B NTC notices.
• There are no registrant-style amendments. If a notice must be revised, the Commission issues a corrected or supplemental notice through the same release mechanism.

How This Dataset Differs From Similar Datasets or Filings

Form 6B NTC sits in a narrow corner of the exemptive-application workflow and is easily confused with adjacent forms whose names, abbreviations, or procedural function overlap.

Closest related filings

Form 6B EL — Section 6(b) exemption order. 6B NTC opens the comment window; 6B EL closes the proceeding with the SEC's order granting (or otherwise resolving) the relief. Same applicant, same release sequence, different procedural moment. 6B NTC tells you what was requested and when comments were invited; 6B EL tells you what was granted and on what conditions. Lifecycle research needs both.

Form 40-APP / 40-APP/A and Form 40-APP NTC — general 1940 Act exemptive applications. 40-APP is the umbrella application form for exemptive, declaratory, and other relief under the Act, used by registered funds, BDCs, advisers, and related parties. 40-APP NTC is the corresponding SEC notice. The dividing line is filer eligibility: any 1940 Act applicant that is not an employees' securities company routes through 40-APP / 40-APP NTC. The two notice streams are mutually exclusive — a filing is either 6B NTC or 40-APP NTC, never both.

Form 6c-NTC — Section 6(c) exemption notices. Section 6(c) is the Commission's broad general exemptive authority and produces the bulk of fund-industry exemptive orders (fund-of-funds, co-investment, multi-class, historical ETF relief). Section 6(b) is a narrow carve-out limited to employees' securities companies. A 6c-NTC dataset is large and substantively diverse; 6B NTC is small and confined to a single applicant class. The split is statutory basis, not procedural form.

The underlying application. 6B NTC summarizes an application filed separately on EDGAR by the applicant; it is not the application itself. The application carries the full factual representations, conditions, exhibits, and proposed terms. The notice is a public-facing condensation plus the SEC release number and comment-period language. For the operative record of requested relief, the application is required; the notice alone is too thin.

"NT" late-filing notifications (NT 10-K, NT 10-Q, NT 20-F, NT 6-K). Pure naming collision. "NT" = Notification of inability to timely file a periodic report under Rule 12b-25, filed by the registrant. "NTC" = Notice of an exemptive application, issued by the SEC. No shared statute, filer, content, or process. Any search that treats "NT" and "NTC" as variants of one tag will mix unrelated regimes.

Key differences at a glance

Boundary summary

Form 6B NTC is distinct on five locked-in axes: Section 6(b) statutory basis, employees' securities company filer class, SEC-issued document under EDGAR's reserved CIK 9999999997, notice-of-application procedural stage, and a summary-only content depth that references but does not reproduce the underlying application. Move any one of those axes — different statute, different filer, different stage — and the correct dataset becomes 6c-NTC, 40-APP NTC, 6B EL, the application itself, or an NT-prefix late-filing notice. The dataset is the right source only for the public-notice stage of Section 6(b) employees' securities company exemption activity; for any wider question about 1940 Act exemptive relief, an adjacent dataset will fit better.

Who Uses This Dataset

Form 6B NTC notices serve a narrow set of practitioners working on Section 6(b) exemptive relief for employees' securities companies. Users rely on a tight combination of structured metadata.json fields (applicant identity, release number, filing date, scope of relief) and the underlying PDF text.

1940 Act regulatory counsel at law firms

Partners and associates drafting a new ESC application read prior notices to map the conditions the staff has historically required and the categories of co-investment, principal transaction, and joint arrangement relief granted under Sections 17(a), 17(d), and 17(e). They pull applicant identity, release number, scope of relief, and date from metadata.json to build chronological precedent tables, then mine PDF text for operative condition language they adapt into their application and proposed order.

In-house counsel at firms operating ESCs

Lawyers at sponsors running ESC vehicles for partners and senior employees use the notices to benchmark peer relief and conditions. Applicant identity locates comparable sponsors; the relief summary tests whether a proposed structure matches what the staff has granted; the release number links to the final order. Output feeds board memos and investment committee decisions on whether to file, accept standard conditions, or negotiate variations.

Compliance teams at sponsoring firms

CCOs at firms already operating under an existing order monitor new notices for drift in conditions on co-investment allocation, principal transaction review, board composition, and recordkeeping. They use the dated metadata to flag the most recent notices and compare PDF condition text line by line against their own order to anticipate amendments and update internal policies.

SEC Division of Investment Management staff

Staff reviewing exemptive applications use the public notice record alongside internal files for consistency checks, historical review, and onboarding new attorneys in the Chief Counsel's Office and Investment Company Regulation Office. Release number, applicant identity, and relief summary anchor cross-referencing against prior matters.

Academic researchers

Securities-law scholars and finance academics treat the dataset as a complete population of 6B notices for the covered period. Structured metadata supports quantitative work on filing frequency, applicant type, and time trends; PDF text supports qualitative coding of relief categories and condition evolution.

Policy researchers and regulatory affairs teams

Analysts at industry trade associations, financial-regulation think tanks, and regulatory affairs groups inside large asset managers track Section 6(b) practice as part of broader monitoring of discretionary exemptive authority. Release numbers and dates let them link notices to final orders and cite precedent in comment letters and position papers on whether codified rules should replace ad hoc relief.

Adjacent exemptive counsel and KM lawyers

Counsel handling Section 17 co-investment relief for business development companies and registered funds mine ESC notices for transferable condition language and early signals on conflicts, allocation, and board oversight. Knowledge management lawyers ingest metadata.json into precedent databases (applicant, accession, release, date) and index PDF text for full-text search so associates can retrieve every notice addressing a specific provision.

Across every user group, four metadata fields do most of the work: applicant identity (who got relief), relief scope and statutory citations (what was granted), release number (link to the order), and filing date (precedent timeline). The PDF text supplies the operative language practitioners quote, compare, and adapt.

Specific Use Cases

The dataset is small and tightly scoped, so use cases concentrate on precedent work, condition tracking, and joining the notice to the rest of the Section 6(b) proceeding lifecycle.

Building a precedent table of ESC exemption conditions

Pull entities[0].companyName, entities[0].fileNo (the 813- series file number), filedAt, and the Investment Company Act release number from the PDF masthead across every accession folder to assemble a chronological precedent table. Mine the "APPLICANTS' REPRESENTATIONS" and condition language in each PDF for the negotiated terms tied to Section 17(a), Section 17(d), and Section 17(e) relief. Output is a side-by-side comparison drafters use when preparing a new ESC application.

Tracking condition drift for firms operating under an existing order

Compliance teams at sponsors already operating an ESC sort accessions by filedAt to surface the most recent notices, then diff PDF condition text on co-investment allocation, principal transaction review, board composition, and recordkeeping against the conditions in their own outstanding order. Drift triggers internal policy updates and, where material, a decision to file an amendment.

Joining the notice to the application and final order

Use entities[0].fileNo as the join key to link each 6B NTC accession to the underlying Form 40-APP / 40-6B application and to the eventual 6B EL order, all of which sit in adjacent EDGAR datasets. The notice's release number and filedAt timestamp anchor the comment-period window between application and order, producing a complete per-proceeding lifecycle record for case studies and litigation support.

Benchmarking peer ESC structures for in-house counsel

In-house counsel at sponsors considering a new ESC vehicle filter the dataset by sponsor type or jurisdiction (entities[0].stateOfIncorporation) and read the "SUMMARY OF APPLICATION" section of comparable notices to test whether a proposed eligibility scheme, sponsor-affiliation rule, or investment-program scope matches what the staff has historically accepted. Output feeds board memos on whether to file, accept standard conditions, or negotiate variations.

Mining transferable condition language for adjacent Section 17 relief

Counsel drafting Section 17 co-investment applications for BDCs and registered funds full-text search the PDF corpus for operative condition phrasing (allocation methodology, independent director findings, quarterly board review) that originated in ESC orders and has been adapted into wider exemptive practice. The structured metadata.json fields let knowledge-management teams ingest the corpus into precedent databases keyed by applicant, accession, release, and date.

Quantitative analysis of Section 6(b) practice

Researchers treat the dataset as the complete population of 6B notices for the covered window and use filedAt, applicant identity, and stateOfIncorporation to chart filing frequency, sponsor concentration, and time trends. Coded PDF text supports qualitative analysis of how relief categories and condition packages have evolved, feeding academic papers and trade-association comment letters on whether codified rules should replace ad hoc Section 6(b) relief.

Dataset Access

Dataset Index JSON API: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-6b-ntc-files.json

This endpoint returns dataset metadata, the download URL for the full archive, and a list of individual container files with their size, record count, and last updated timestamp. Use it to monitor which containers have changed in the latest refresh run and decide which containers to re-download on a day-by-day basis. This endpoint does not require an API key.

          1
          {
        

          2
            "datasetId": "1f13365b-9ae0-6a41-a79f-310d4f80953e",
        

          3
            "datasetDownloadUrl": "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-6b-ntc-files.zip",
        

          4
            "name": "Form 6B NTC Files Dataset",
        

          5
            "updatedAt": "2026-04-16T08:40:13.446Z",
        

          6
            "earliestSampleDate": "2009-04-01",
        

          7
            "totalRecords": 31,
        

          8
            "totalSize": 3241604,
        

          9
            "formTypes": ["6B NTC"],
        

          10
            "containerFormat": "ZIP",
        

          11
            "fileTypes": ["PDF", "JSON"],
        

          12
            "containers": [
        

          13
              {
        

          14
                "downloadUrl": "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-6b-ntc-files/2026/2026-03.zip",
        

          15
                "key": "2026/2026-03.zip",
        

          16
                "size": 138271,
        

          17
                "records": 2,
        

          18
                "updatedAt": "2026-04-16T08:40:13.446Z"
        

          19
              }
        

          20
            ]
        

          21
          }
        

Download Entire Dataset: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-6b-ntc-files.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY

Downloads the complete dataset, covering all Form 6B NTC filings from April 2009 to present, as a single ZIP archive containing per-filing metadata files and all original EDGAR submission documents (excluding images). This endpoint requires an API key.

Download Single Container: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-6b-ntc-files/2026/2026-03.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY

Downloads one monthly container archive instead of the full dataset, which is useful for incremental syncing once the initial dataset has been retrieved. This endpoint requires an API key.

Frequently Asked Questions

What form does this dataset cover?

The dataset covers EDGAR form type 6B NTC, the public notice the SEC issues when an employees' securities company files an exemptive application under Section 6(b) of the Investment Company Act of 1940. It does not include the underlying application or the eventual Commission order, which live in separate EDGAR accessions under their own form types.

What does one record in this dataset represent?

One record is a single EDGAR accession of form type 6B NTC, materialized as one accession-level folder containing a structured metadata.json descriptor and the original non-image EDGAR submission documents — for this form, overwhelmingly a single SEC-authored PDF carrying the notice text, optionally accompanied by the concatenated complete-submission text bundle.

Who issues Form 6B NTC, and who is the underlying applicant?

The notice is issued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, not by an outside registrant, which is why every accession sits under EDGAR's reserved CIK 9999999997. The substantive applicant identified inside the notice is an "employees' securities company" — a pooled investment vehicle organized for the partners, directors, officers, employees, or consultants of a sponsoring firm — together with that sponsor and any general partner, managing member, or affiliated investment manager.

What time period does the dataset cover?

Coverage starts on April 1, 2009 — the point at which Commission Section 6(b) notices began appearing systematically on EDGAR under this form code — and runs to the present. Issuance is event-driven rather than periodic, so the dataset accumulates only when the Commission publishes a new notice.

What file format is the dataset distributed in?

The dataset is distributed as a single ZIP archive containing nested per-month ZIP archives organized as /<YYYY>/<YYYY>-<MM>.zip. The only file types inside the accession folders are PDF (the SEC notice document) and JSON (the metadata.json descriptor); image files from the original EDGAR submission are excluded by design.

How does Form 6B NTC differ from Form 40-APP NTC and Form 6c-NTC?

The dividing line from 40-APP NTC is filer eligibility: 40-APP NTC covers exemptive applications by registered funds, BDCs, advisers, and other 1940 Act applicants that are not employees' securities companies, and the two notice streams are mutually exclusive. The dividing line from 6c-NTC is statutory basis: 6c-NTC notices rest on the Commission's broad Section 6(c) general exemptive authority and produce a large, diverse corpus, while 6B NTC is the narrow Section 6(b) carve-out limited to employees' securities companies.

How do I link a 6B NTC notice to the application and final order it relates to?

Use entities[0].fileNo — the Investment Company Act file number, typically in the 813- series — as the join key across the three stages of the proceeding. The notice's Investment Company Act release number and filedAt timestamp anchor the comment-period window between the underlying Form 40-APP / 40-6B application and the subsequent 6B EL order, both of which sit as separate accessions in adjacent EDGAR datasets.