SEC Form MA-W Files Dataset

The SEC Form MA-W Files Dataset packages every notice of withdrawal from registration as a municipal advisor filed with the Commission through EDGAR under Section 15B of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 15Ba1-4 thereunder. Each record is one complete EDGAR submission of Form MA-W — the firm-level, event-driven exit filing through which a registered municipal advisor terminates its SEC registration — identified by an 18-digit accession number and packaged as the structured mawfiler XML payload, the SEC's XSL-rendered XHTML view of that payload, and a JSON metadata envelope. Filings are made by the registered municipal advisor itself: independent municipal advisory firms, solicitors and placement agents, swap and guaranteed-investment-contract advisors, and bank- or broker-dealer-affiliated advisory units that previously registered on Form MA. The dataset begins on December 1, 2014 — the first wave of voluntary withdrawals after the permanent municipal advisor regime took effect on July 1, 2014 — and is delivered as monthly ZIP containers organized into yearly partitions, with XML and JSON files inside each per-accession folder.

Dataset APIs

Dataset Files

What This Dataset Contains

The dataset contains the complete EDGAR record of Form MA-W filings, which is the notice of withdrawal from registration as a municipal advisor filed under Section 15B of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 15Ba1-4 thereunder. Form MA-W is the counterpart to Form MA (initial application) and Form MA/A (amendment), and it is the instrument by which a municipal advisor formally requests the SEC to terminate its registration on the basis that it has ceased the activities that gave rise to the registration. Because the filing is a withdrawal, it is short and almost entirely declaratory: it identifies the registrant, attests to the existence or absence of three categories of unresolved obligations (unearned prepaid fees, unrepaid client borrowings, and unsatisfied judgments or liens), discloses the disposition of any in-force advisory contracts, and designates one or more custodians of the firm's books and records as required by Rule 15Ba1-8 for the post-withdrawal recordkeeping period. Where any of the three obligation questions is answered "yes," the registrant must additionally file a Statement of Financial Condition (Schedule W2).

Form MA-W has been filed electronically through EDGAR Online Forms since December 2014, when the SEC's municipal advisor registration regime moved fully into electronic submission. The dataset therefore covers the entire electronic record of voluntary municipal advisor withdrawals from inception forward; SEC-initiated cancellations under Rule 15Ba1-3 and revocations under Section 15B(c)(2) sit outside it. The dataset is delivered as monthly ZIP containers organized into yearly partitions, and the only file types present in any record are JSON and XML/XHTML — there are no SGML wrappers, XBRL instances, PDF exhibits, or image files.

Content Structure of a Single Form MA-W Record

What one record represents

A single record in the Form MA-W Files Dataset is one complete EDGAR submission of Form MA-W, identified by its 18-digit accession number. The record unit is the accession folder — a directory whose name is the unpadded accession (for example 000163540125000004) and whose contents are the structured form payload, the SEC's XSL-rendered presentation view of that payload, and a JSON metadata envelope describing the submission. Each accession corresponds to one notice of withdrawal from registration as a municipal advisor by a single registrant; there is one Form MA-W per termination event, so an accession is effectively synonymous with one withdrawal filing for one municipal advisor.

Container layout and per-record file inventory

The dataset is delivered as monthly ZIP archives organized into yearly partitions. Each monthly ZIP expands into a single root folder named YYYY-MM/, beneath which the accession folders sit side by side. The hierarchy is therefore: yearly partition → monthly ZIP → YYYY-MM/ root → one folder per accession → per-accession files. Because Form MA-W is a low-volume filing type, monthly partitions are sparse: many months hold only a handful of accessions, and some calendar months are absent from the index entirely. The monthly partition should be treated as a packaging convenience, not a guarantee of temporal density.

Inside each accession folder, three files are consistently present:

• metadata.json — the EDGAR header summary, regenerated from the SGML envelope of the submission. It restates the accession number with dashes, the form type, the acceptance timestamp, the registrant's CIK and identifying attributes, and an index of the documents that accompanied the submission, together with stable EDGAR URLs to the rendered view, the index page, and the full SGML text.
• primary_doc.xml — the structured, machine-readable Form MA-W payload in EDGAR's mawfiler XML schema. This is the authoritative source of the form's content.
• xslFormMA-W_X01/primary_doc.xml — the SEC's XSL-rendered XHTML view of the same primary document, written under a subdirectory whose name encodes the stylesheet version. The file extension is .xml but the bytes are XHTML 1.0 Strict that references EDGAR-side CSS (/css/MAW_print.css) and the SEC logo image; it is a presentation artifact intended for human reading, not a second source of structured data.

The file-types found in the dataset are JSON and XML/XHTML only. There are no SGML <DOCUMENT> wrapper files, no XBRL instances, no PDF exhibits, and no data exhibits. Image files attached at submission time are excluded by design.

metadata.json schema

The metadata file carries a flat envelope describing the submission and a small number of nested arrays describing the documents and the entities involved. The fields are:

• formType — the literal string "MA-W".
• accessionNo — the dashed 20-character EDGAR accession number, e.g. "0001635401-25-000004".
• filedAt — ISO-8601 acceptance timestamp with timezone offset.
• description — a fixed human-readable label, "Form MA-W - Notice of Withdrawal from Registration as a Municipal Advisor".
• id — an opaque 32-character hexadecimal internal identifier.
• linkToFilingDetails — the EDGAR URL of the rendered XHTML view (the xslFormMA-W_X01/primary_doc.xml file as served by EDGAR).
• linkToHtml — the URL of the EDGAR submission -index.htm page.
• linkToTxt — the URL of the complete SGML submission text file on EDGAR.
• linkToXbrl — empty for MA-W, since XBRL does not apply to this form.
• documentFormatFiles — an array of document descriptors, each with sequence, size, documentUrl, type (e.g. "MA-W"), and an optional description such as "Screen Reader Accessible File" or "Complete submission text file". The descriptor list typically enumerates the rendered XSL view, the raw primary_doc.xml, and the complete submission .txt on EDGAR.
• dataFiles — an empty array; Form MA-W has no data exhibits.
• seriesAndClassesContractsInformation — an empty array; not applicable to municipal advisor filings.
• entities — an array of filer-entity records. For Form MA-W this almost always contains a single entry, the withdrawing municipal advisor itself, with these sub-fields: cik (Central Index Key), companyName (legal name with parenthesized role suffix such as "(Filer)"), type (the form type repeated), act (the Securities Act under which the filing is made, "34" for the Exchange Act), fileNo (SEC file number, prefixed 867- because that range is reserved for municipal advisor registrations), filmNo (EDGAR film number assigned at acceptance), irsNo (IRS Employer Identification Number), stateOfIncorporation (two-letter code), and fiscalYearEnd (MMDD).

primary_doc.xml — the structured form payload

The primary document is rooted at <edgarSubmission> in the namespace http://www.sec.gov/edgar/mawfiler, with two helper namespaces conventionally bound as com: (http://www.sec.gov/edgar/common_ma) and com1: (http://www.sec.gov/edgar/common). The body splits into a header and the form data.

<headerData>

The header carries the EDGAR submission envelope and identifies the filer at the wire level:

• <submissionType> — the literal MA-W.
• <filerInfo> — wraps a single <com:filer> block containing <com1:filerId> (the CIK, zero-padded to ten digits), <com1:filerCcc> (the CIK Confirmation Code, always redacted to XXXXXXXX in the public archive because the CCC is a private credential), and <com1:filerFileNumber> (matches the fileNo reported in metadata.entities[]). It also contains <com:contact> with <com1:name> and <com1:phoneNumber> of the EDGAR submission contact, and a top-level <com:contactEmail>.

<formData> — the seven items of Form MA-W

The form's items map one-to-one to elements inside <formData>. Each corresponds to a numbered question on the paper Form MA-W and on the rendered EDGAR view:

• Item 1A — <fullLegalName>. The full legal name of the registrant. The instructions require this to match the most recent Form MA on file.
• Item 1B — <fileNumber>. The SEC file number being withdrawn. For municipal advisors this is in the 867-xxxxx range.
• Item 2 — <contactPersonInfo>. The firm-side contact for follow-up regarding the withdrawal. It contains a <nameAddressPhone> block with <individualName> decomposed into <com:firstName>, <com:middleName>, and <com:lastName>; an <addressInfo><com:address> block with <com1:street1>, optional <com1:street2>, <com1:city>, <com1:stateOrCountry>, and <com1:zipCode>; and a <phoneNumber>. It also carries the contact's <title> and <email>.
• Item 3A — <isReceivedAnyPrepaidFee>. Boolean (Y/N) indicating whether the registrant has any unearned prepaid municipal advisory fees that have not been refunded. A Y answer triggers an associated dollar-amount field and the requirement to file Schedule W2.
• Item 3B — <isBorrowedNotRepaid>. Boolean indicating whether the registrant has any client borrowings that remain unrepaid. As with 3A, a Y triggers a companion amount and a Schedule W2 obligation.
• Item 4 — <isAdvisoryContract>. Boolean indicating whether any municipal advisory contracts have been or will be assigned to another person. A Y answer obligates the registrant to enumerate each assignee in Schedule W1 Section 4 of the rendered view.
• Item 5 — <isUnsatisfiedJudgementsOrLiens>. Boolean indicating whether any judgments or liens against the registrant remain unsatisfied. The element name carries the SEC schema's persistent misspelling "Judgements" — code consuming the XML must match the literal name. A Y here also triggers Schedule W2.
• Item 6 — <booksAndRecords> (Schedule W1 Section 6). A repeating container of one or more <personLocation> blocks, each describing one custodian of the firm's books and records as required by Exchange Act Rule 15Ba1-8. Inside each block, <personInfo> carries the custodian's name, address, and phone, while <locationInfo> carries a <nameAddressPhone> for the actual storage location plus a free-text <description> of what is stored there (for example, "ROBERT KUO'S HOME"). This item is mandatory irrespective of how Items 3A, 3B, 4, and 5 were answered: the firm must always nominate post-withdrawal record custodians.
• Item 7 — Statement of Financial Condition (Schedule W2). Appears only when at least one of Items 3A, 3B, or 5 is answered Y, in which case the registrant must attach a financial statement of assets and liabilities relevant to the obligations that triggered the requirement. When all three gating answers are N, the element is absent entirely.

<execution> — the signature block

The execution block carries the legally operative signature attesting to the withdrawal. It is polymorphic by filer kind. For an entity filer, <muncipalAdvisoryFirm> (note the schema typo "muncipal" — it is the literal element name) wraps <com1:signature>, <com1:signerName>, <com1:title>, and <com1:date> (formatted MM-DD-YYYY). For a sole-proprietor registrant the schema provides a parallel <soleProprietor> element with the same signature children. Exactly one of the two appears in any given filing.

The XSL-rendered view

The companion file at xslFormMA-W_X01/primary_doc.xml is the SEC's transformed XHTML rendering of the structured form. It mirrors the item order of the mawfiler XML, presents the boolean answers as checkbox glyphs, lays out the address blocks in form-style tables, and labels the schedules (Schedule W1 Section 4, W1 Section 6, W2) as they would appear on the paper form. It is not a separate data source — every fact in the rendered view is derivable from primary_doc.xml — and any discrepancy should be resolved in favor of the structured XML. The folder name encodes the version of the SEC's MA-W stylesheet used at acceptance time; older filings may sit under earlier versioned folder names.

What the dataset record includes

Each accession packages the structured primary_doc.xml, the SEC's XSL-rendered XHTML view of that document, and the synthesized metadata.json envelope. Together these reconstitute the entirety of the substantive Form MA-W content as it sits on EDGAR, plus stable links back to the EDGAR-hosted index page and the complete SGML submission text for callers who need the original wire form.

What is not included

Image files attached to the original submission are excluded. The CIK Confirmation Code is masked. The complete SGML .txt submission file and the EDGAR index HTML are not packaged into the accession folder, although both are reachable through linkToTxt and linkToHtml in metadata.json. There are no XBRL instances or data exhibits because Form MA-W does not carry structured financial data of that kind, and there are no separate exhibit attachments — Schedule W1 and Schedule W2 content, when present, lives inside the same primary_doc.xml rather than as standalone files.

Format consistency and per-filing variability

Form MA-W has been an EDGAR Online Forms submission from the first day of the regime, so the dataset has no ASCII or plain-HTML legacy era. Every record across the full date range carries the same trio of files: a JSON metadata envelope, an XML primary document in the mawfiler schema, and an XHTML rendering under the stylesheet folder. The substantive structure of Form MA-W — Items 1 through 6 plus the conditional Item 7 financial statement, the Schedule W1 enumerations of contract assignees and record custodians, and the Schedule W2 financial statement — has remained stable since adoption. The XML schema and namespace bindings have likewise been stable, including the idiosyncratic element names (muncipalAdvisoryFirm, isUnsatisfiedJudgementsOrLiens). Stylesheet versions encoded in the xslFormMA-W_X01 folder name advance occasionally, but those changes affect only the rendered view and not the structured payload.

The most material per-filing variability lies in: (a) whether Schedule W2 is present, gated by the Item 3A, 3B, and 5 booleans; (b) whether the execution block uses the <muncipalAdvisoryFirm> or the <soleProprietor> variant; (c) the number of <personLocation> blocks under <booksAndRecords>; and (d) the number of contract-assignee entries when Item 4 is Y.

Interpretation and extraction notes

• Authoritative payload. The XHTML rendering carries a .xml extension, so consumers that route by extension alone will misparse it. The authoritative structured payload is always the top-level primary_doc.xml, never the file inside xslFormMA-W_X01/.
• Namespace handling. Address sub-elements live in the com1: (common) namespace nested inside com: (common_ma) wrappers. XPath expressions must bind both prefixes correctly rather than assuming a single namespace.
• Schema spellings. The literal element names muncipalAdvisoryFirm (missing first i) and isUnsatisfiedJudgementsOrLiens ("Judgements") are persistent SEC schema spellings; matchers must use them verbatim.
• CCC redaction. The filerCcc field is uniformly masked as XXXXXXXX and should not be treated as data.
• size quirks. The documentFormatFiles[].size field is occasionally populated with a single space character instead of an integer, reflecting cases where EDGAR did not record a size for that descriptor.
• File-number signal. The 867- prefix on the file number is the canonical signal that the file number belongs to the municipal advisor registration series, and can be used to discriminate MA-W filings from other Exchange Act withdrawals.
• Schedule gating. Items 3A, 3B, and 5 jointly determine whether Schedule W2 (Item 7) is present in the XML. Item 4 governs whether Schedule W1 Section 4 enumerates contract assignees in the rendered view. Item 6 (Schedule W1 Section 6) is always present.
• Execution polymorphism. The presence of <muncipalAdvisoryFirm> versus <soleProprietor> under <execution> is the cleanest structural signal of the filer's organizational form, independent of entities[].stateOfIncorporation.
• Sparse partitioning. Because the filing type is low-volume, monthly partitioning yields many sparse months and occasional missing months in the index. The temporal index is best treated as a list of months that have at least one filing rather than as a complete monthly grid.

Who Files Form MA-W and When

Who files

Each record in this dataset is a Form MA-W notice of withdrawal submitted to EDGAR by a firm currently registered with the SEC as a municipal advisor. The filer is always the registered entity itself, acting at the firm level to terminate its own SEC municipal advisor registration. Filing Form MA-W removes the firm from the active municipal advisor population maintained by the SEC and the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board (MSRB).

The municipal advisor registration regime was created by Section 975 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, which amended Section 15B of the Exchange Act to require any person engaging in municipal advisory activities to register with the Commission. Under Section 15B(e)(4), a municipal advisor is a person (other than a municipal entity or its employees) that advises municipal entities or obligated persons on municipal financial products or the issuance of municipal securities, or that solicits municipal entities on behalf of dealers, advisers, or other advisors.

The population eligible to file Form MA-W therefore consists of entities that previously completed an SEC municipal advisor registration on Form MA, including:

• independent municipal advisory firms advising state and local issuers on bond offerings, refundings, swaps, and capital planning
• solicitors and placement agents whose activities reach municipal entity clients in a manner that triggers municipal advisor status
• swap advisors and guaranteed investment contract advisors providing advice on municipal financial products
• bank-affiliated and broker-dealer-affiliated municipal advisory units that registered as separate municipal advisor entities

Persons that relied on an exemption or exclusion under Section 15B(e)(4)(C) and Rule 15Ba1-1 and never registered have no occasion to file Form MA-W.

When the filing is triggered

Rule 15Ba1-4 under the Exchange Act governs withdrawal from municipal advisor registration and requires any registrant that wishes to withdraw to file a notice on Form MA-W. The filing is event-driven, not periodic. It is triggered by the firm's decision or by a corporate event that ends its municipal advisory business or its existence as a registered entity. Common triggers include:

• voluntary cessation of municipal advisory business
• dissolution or wind-down of the legal entity holding the registration
• merger, consolidation, or acquisition in which the registrant is absorbed into a successor that either does not perform municipal advisory activities or holds its own registration
• internal reorganization that moves the municipal advisory business to an affiliated registrant, leaving the original entity inactive
• a strategic exit from the municipal advisory line while retaining other registrations (for example, broker-dealer or investment adviser status)
• reliance on a newly applicable exemption that makes registration unnecessary

Under Rule 15Ba1-4, a Form MA-W becomes effective on the 60th day after filing, or within such shorter or longer period as the Commission may determine. During the 60-day pendency window the firm remains a registered municipal advisor and remains subject to all SEC and MSRB obligations. The Commission may postpone the effective date if it institutes a proceeding against the registrant, or accelerate it in appropriate circumstances. There is no recurring filing schedule: a firm files Form MA-W once, when it exits the regime.

Important distinctions

• Voluntary withdrawal vs. SEC cancellation. This dataset captures voluntary firm-initiated exits only. Under Rule 15Ba1-3, the Commission may administratively cancel the registration of a municipal advisor that is no longer in existence, no longer engaged in business as a municipal advisor, or cannot be located. Cancellations under Rule 15Ba1-3 are SEC orders and do not produce Form MA-W filings.
• Voluntary withdrawal vs. revocation. Under Section 15B(c)(2), the Commission may, after notice and hearing, censure, limit, suspend, or revoke a municipal advisor's registration on statutory grounds such as willful violations. Revocations are SEC-initiated and are not represented in this dataset.
• Firm exit vs. individual termination. Form MA-W terminates the firm's registration only. The departure of a natural person who is an associated municipal advisor representative is handled through Form MA-I, not Form MA-W.
• Parallel registrations. A firm withdrawing as a municipal advisor may continue to hold other SEC registrations. Form MA-W does not affect those statuses; broker-dealer withdrawal uses Form BDW and investment adviser withdrawal uses Form ADV-W.
• Successor firms. A successor that absorbs a withdrawing registrant in a merger must obtain its own municipal advisor registration if it will conduct municipal advisory activities; registration does not transfer through Form MA-W.
• Surviving record-retention duties. Filing Form MA-W and reaching effectiveness does not extinguish all obligations. Rule 15Ba1-8 requires preservation of municipal advisor books and records (generally five years, with the first two years easily accessible), and that duty continues after withdrawal. Form MA-W therefore requires disclosure of the persons who will hold custody of the firm's books and records during the residual retention period, so the SEC and MSRB can inspect them after deregistration.

Reporting framework summary

• Statutory basis: Section 15B of the Exchange Act, as amended by Section 975 of the Dodd-Frank Act
• Operative rule: Rule 15Ba1-4 (withdrawal procedure and 60-day effectiveness)
• Related rules: Rule 15Ba1-3 (SEC-initiated cancellation, outside this dataset), Rule 15Ba1-8 (post-withdrawal recordkeeping)
• Filer: the registered municipal advisor firm itself
• Trigger: the firm's decision or corporate event causing it to cease municipal advisory activities or end its existence as a registered entity
• Cadence: one-time, event-driven; effective 60 days after filing absent SEC action

Dataset coverage

The permanent municipal advisor registration rules and the Form MA family (including Form MA-W) were adopted in September 2013 and took effect beginning July 1, 2014, with staggered registration deadlines through October 2014. Withdrawals under the permanent regime could not occur before that point. The dataset's earliest record on December 1, 2014 reflects the first wave of voluntary withdrawals filed shortly after the registration system went live. Form MA-W has been filed exclusively through EDGAR from inception, so the EDGAR population is the complete electronic record of voluntary municipal advisor withdrawals; SEC-initiated cancellations and revocations sit outside it.

How This Dataset Differs From Similar Datasets or Filings

Form MA-W is the terminal SEC filing in the municipal advisor registration lifecycle under Section 15B of the Exchange Act. The most useful comparison targets fall into three groups: other forms in the MA family (entry, individual representatives, annual amendment, non-resident consent); withdrawal forms used by adjacent SEC registrant populations (investment advisers, broker-dealers); and the parallel MSRB registration layer. Each overlaps in filer population or lifecycle logic, but none substitutes for MA-W.

Form MA (initial municipal advisor registration)

Form MA is the entry filing: it establishes Section 15B registration and discloses the firm's business, ownership, control persons, and disciplinary history. MA-W is its mirror-image lifecycle event. MA opens the registration and triggers ongoing amendment obligations; MA-W closes it and discloses the unwind. MA carries no fields for assigned contracts, prepaid fee returns, or post-exit recordkeeping custody, and MA-W carries none of MA's multi-schedule operational profile.

Form MA-I (individual municipal advisor representatives)

Form MA-I is filed for each natural-person associated representative, capturing employment history and DRP-style disclosures (functionally analogous to Form U4). It is person-level and ongoing; MA-W is firm-level and terminal. Individual disassociations are handled through MA-I amendments, not a standalone exit form, and there is no person-level analog to MA-W. When a firm files MA-W, its associated MA-I records become inactive as a downstream consequence rather than through any MA-I filing.

Form MA-A (annual amendment to Form MA)

Form MA-A is the periodic updating amendment to Form MA, due within 90 days of fiscal year end. It is maintenance-driven and recurring; MA-W is event-driven and filed once. MA-A datasets give yearly snapshots of active registrants; MA-W marks the precise exit point and discloses the disposition of remaining advisory obligations that no MA-A would capture.

Form MA-NR (non-resident consent to service of process)

Form MA-NR is a narrow, ancillary procedural consent filed by non-resident municipal advisors, general partners, managing agents, or associated persons to appoint an agent for service of process and consent to SEC and MSRB jurisdiction. MA-NR governs how a non-resident can be served while registered; MA-W governs what happens when the firm stops being registered. Same registrant universe, entirely different obligation.

Form ADV-W (investment adviser withdrawal)

ADV-W is the closest structural analog. Both are notices of withdrawal with partial vs. full options, custody disclosures, and statements about outstanding client obligations. The differences are statutory and substantive: ADV-W is filed under the Advisers Act through IARD; MA-W is filed under Section 15B of the Exchange Act through EDGAR. MA-W disclosures around prepaid municipal advisory fees, assigned municipal advisory contracts, and Rule 15Ba1-8 books-and-records custody have no ADV-W counterpart. A dually registered firm must file both; one does not subsume the other.

Form BDW (broker-dealer withdrawal)

BDW is the uniform request for withdrawal from broker-dealer registration, filed through Web CRD and reviewed by FINRA, the SEC, and applicable states and SROs. It shares MA-W's terminal-lifecycle role but differs in regime (Section 15 vs. Section 15B), processing system (CRD/FINRA vs. EDGAR/SEC), and the obligations being unwound (customer accounts, SIPC coverage, SRO memberships vs. municipal advisory contracts and prepaid advisory fees). A firm conducting both activities must file BDW and MA-W separately.

MSRB Form A-12 (MSRB registration)

MSRB Form A-12 is the MSRB's initial registration form for brokers, dealers, and municipal advisors engaged in municipal securities or municipal advisory activity, maintained through the MSRB Gateway. It is required in addition to SEC Form MA but is administered by a different regulator, filed through a different system, and not part of the EDGAR corpus. MA-W terminates only the SEC side of the dual regime; MSRB registration is terminated separately through MSRB withdrawal procedures. Researchers relying solely on MA-W will miss the MSRB-side termination, and MSRB Gateway data contains none of MA-W's structured contract-assignment, prepaid-fee, or recordkeeping-custody fields.

Voluntary withdrawal vs. SEC cancellation under Rule 15Ba1-3

MA-W is voluntary and registrant-initiated. Rule 15Ba1-3 cancellation is SEC-initiated, used when the Commission finds the advisor no longer exists, is not engaged in municipal advisory business, or cannot be located. Cancellations appear in Commission orders and EDGAR status changes, not as MA-W filings. The MA-W dataset therefore captures only the voluntary half of the exit population; complete attrition analysis requires combining MA-W with SEC cancellation actions.

What MA-W contains that no other dataset provides

The MA-W filing body carries four disclosures with no equivalent in any comparison dataset above:

• Prepaid municipal advisory fees owed to clients at the time of withdrawal, specific to the municipal advisor fee model and absent from ADV-W, BDW, and all MA-family entry filings.
• Municipal advisory contracts assigned to other registered municipal advisors, capturing the disposition of ongoing client relationships at the moment of exit.
• Names and addresses of the persons who will have custody of the firm's books and records following withdrawal, satisfying the Rule 15Ba1-8 recordkeeping obligation that survives termination.
• A financial statement of assets and liabilities, where applicable, supporting any remaining client obligations at the point of exit.

These fields make MA-W the only structured source for how municipal advisor firms wind down advisory obligations and where post-withdrawal records reside.

Boundary summary

The MA-W Files Dataset is narrow, terminal, and event-driven. It shares its filer population with MA, MA-I, and MA-A but covers the opposite end of the lifecycle, and it shares its withdrawal mechanic with ADV-W and BDW but applies to a different statutory regime with fundamentally different post-exit disclosures. It sits only on the SEC side of the dual SEC/MSRB regime and only on the voluntary side of the termination boundary. Complete municipal advisor exit coverage requires combining MA-W with Rule 15Ba1-3 cancellation orders and MSRB withdrawal records; for prepaid fee unwind, contract assignment, or post-withdrawal recordkeeping custody, MA-W is the sole source.

Who Uses This Dataset

The Form MA-W population is small, but each filing carries enforcement, contractual, and custodial detail that a defined set of users depend on.

SEC and MSRB Examination and Enforcement Staff

Used to confirm that withdrawing firms have closed out advisory obligations rather than disappeared with open client matters. Staff read the prepaid municipal advisory fees disclosure, the assigned-contracts list, the financial statement of assets and liabilities, and the books-and-records custodian fields. Withdrawal date, CIK, and SEC file number are matched against registration records to flag firms still holding themselves out as advisors, contracts assigned to unregistered entities, or recordkeeping gaps in the post-withdrawal retention period. The filing population also feeds wind-down exam scheduling and reconciliation against prior Form MA and MA-I content.

Municipal Advisor Compliance Officers

In-house compliance and CCO teams use prior MA-W filings as templates when their own firm or an affiliate is winding down. They study how peers populated the assigned-contracts schedule, characterized prepaid-fee refunds, named the books-and-records custodian, and handled the financial statement when client liabilities were outstanding. The CIK, file number, and registrant identifying block also let them confirm a counterparty firm has actually withdrawn, which determines whether engagements must be reassigned, terminated, or migrated to a successor.

Securities Lawyers and Outside Disclosure Counsel

Counsel building wind-down checklists work from the assigned-contracts list, prepaid-fee section, custodian fields, and financial-statement attachment to draft client representations, transition agreements, and books-and-records custody letters. The withdrawal date and any disclosed successor entity support legal opinions on the effectiveness of deregistration and on surviving MSRB Rule G-44 supervisory recordkeeping obligations.

M&A and Transactional Diligence Teams

Buy-side teams evaluating municipal advisory practices, broker-dealer affiliates, or public-finance roll-ups cross-reference the assigned-contracts schedule and registrant identifying block against a target's claimed client book to detect contracts that were assigned away rather than retained. The custodian fields locate historical files for absorbed practices; the financial statement of assets and liabilities supports diligence on residual liabilities, refundable retainers, and unbilled work-in-process the buyer may inherit.

Public-Finance Researchers

Academic and policy researchers studying the post-Dodd-Frank municipal advisor regime aggregate withdrawal dates, CIKs, and registrant identifying fields to build entry-and-exit time series, estimate cohort survival curves, and test how registration costs, exam intensity, or fiduciary rules shape industry composition. The assigned-contracts disclosure surfaces successor advisors and reveals consolidation patterns.

Public-Finance Trade Reporters

Reporters covering the municipal market track exits tied to enforcement actions, lost issuer clients, or corporate dissolutions. They use the registrant name and address block, withdrawal date, financial statement when present, and custodian fields for stories on industry contraction and failed firms. File number and CIK link a withdrawal back to prior MA filings and disciplinary history.

Public-Finance Issuers Whose Advisor Has Withdrawn

State and local issuers, public authorities, conduit borrowers, and their treasury offices consult MA-W filings when their registered advisor disappears from MSRB lookups without a clear handoff. The books-and-records custodian fields identify who now holds engagement files, advice memos, fairness opinions, and bid-evaluation worksheets needed for audit, continuing disclosure, and post-issuance compliance. The assigned-contracts list confirms whether and to whom their engagement transferred; the prepaid-fee disclosure clarifies refundable retainers.

Reference-Data and Vendor Teams Tracking the Advisor Population

Commercial data providers and reference-data teams treat MA-W as the authoritative termination signal. They ingest CIK, file number, registrant identifying information, and effective withdrawal date to flip status fields from active to withdrawn and to maintain point-in-time snapshots. Successor and assignee names from the assigned-contracts schedule feed entity-resolution workflows linking predecessor and successor advisors.

In summary: regulators verify clean exits, compliance and legal teams run wind-downs, deal teams diligence MA targets, researchers and reporters track attrition, issuers locate their own files, and data vendors maintain the canonical advisor population. Each group leans on a different combination of the registrant block, withdrawal date and file number, prepaid-fee and assigned-contracts disclosures, financial statement attachment, and custodian fields.

Specific Use Cases

The records are narrow but each one is dense. The use cases below pair a specific operator with the specific MA-W fields they query and the output it produces.

Locating post-withdrawal books-and-records custodians for an issuer audit

A public-finance issuer whose municipal advisor has disappeared from MSRB lookups needs to retrieve engagement files, fairness opinions, and bid-evaluation memos for a continuing-disclosure or arbitrage-rebate review. They look up the advisor by legal name in the dataset, pull primary_doc.xml, and read the <booksAndRecords> block. Each <personLocation> yields the custodian's name, mailing address, phone, and a free-text description of what is stored there ("client engagement files," "ROBERT KUO'S HOME"). The output is a contact letter to the named custodian requesting specific documents under Rule 15Ba1-8.

Detecting contract assignments to unregistered successors

SEC and MSRB exam staff scan every filing where <isAdvisoryContract> equals Y and pull the assignee names from Schedule W1 Section 4 in the rendered view. Each assignee is matched against the active municipal advisor population using CIK and 867- file numbers. Assignees with no matching active registration are surfaced as exam leads: a withdrawing firm cannot lawfully assign municipal advisory contracts to a person who is not itself a registered municipal advisor. The output is a triage list of withdrawal events that warrant follow-up.

Building an entry-and-exit time series for the municipal advisor population

A public-finance researcher joins MA-W withdrawal events with Form MA initial registrations to compute cohort survival curves under the post-Dodd-Frank regime. Per record they extract entities[].cik, entities[].fileNo, entities[].stateOfIncorporation, <execution> date (the operative withdrawal date), and the <muncipalAdvisoryFirm> vs. <soleProprietor> discriminator from the execution block. The output is a panel keyed by CIK with entry date, exit date, organizational form, and state, used to estimate hazard rates by firm size and structure.

Maintaining the active-vs-withdrawn flag in a commercial advisor reference file

A reference-data vendor treats MA-W acceptance as the authoritative termination signal. The ingest job reads metadata.json for accessionNo, filedAt, entities[].cik, and entities[].fileNo, then flips the registrant's status to "withdrawn" with an effective date taken from <execution>/<com1:date>. Assignee names parsed from the <isAdvisoryContract> enumeration are pushed into entity resolution to link predecessor CIKs to successor advisors. The output is a point-in-time snapshot table consumed by downstream KYC and onboarding systems.

Drafting a wind-down checklist from peer precedent

Outside counsel preparing a client's deregistration pulls the most recent twenty MA-W filings and reads how peers populated each item: the prepaid-fee dollar field gated by <isReceivedAnyPrepaidFee>, the borrowing field gated by <isBorrowedNotRepaid>, the unsatisfied-judgments field (note the schema spelling <isUnsatisfiedJudgementsOrLiens>), the assigned-contracts enumeration, and the custodian designations under <booksAndRecords>. Filings where any 3A/3B/5 boolean is Y are read alongside their attached Schedule W2 financial statement. The output is a redlined draft Form MA-W and a transition-services agreement template tailored to the client's facts.

Identifying targets for roll-up acquisition of small advisory practices

A buy-side M&A team filters the dataset for sole-proprietor and small-entity withdrawals using the <soleProprietor> execution variant and the entities[].stateOfIncorporation field. For each candidate they read the assigned-contracts list to see whether the book was already transferred and to whom, and the <booksAndRecords> custodian to locate residual files. The financial statement attached when Items 3A, 3B, or 5 are Y informs estimates of unbilled work-in-process and refundable retainers a buyer might assume. The output is a target list of recently exited practices whose client relationships may be re-acquirable from the named assignees.

Cross-checking voluntary withdrawals against SEC cancellation orders for attrition analysis

Because MA-W captures only the voluntary half of municipal advisor exits, an analyst combines this dataset with Rule 15Ba1-3 cancellation actions to produce complete attrition coverage. From MA-W they pull accessionNo, entities[].cik, entities[].fileNo (always 867- prefixed), and the <execution> date; from cancellation orders they pull SEC-initiated terminations. The output is a unified exit ledger distinguishing voluntary withdrawal from regulatory cancellation, used in policy work on registration-cost effects and in trade-press reporting on industry contraction.

Dataset Access

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

This endpoint returns dataset metadata (name, description, last update timestamp, earliest sample date, total record and size counts, covered form types, container format, and file types), the full dataset download URL, and the list of available container files with per-container size, record count, updated timestamp, and download URL. Poll this endpoint to detect which containers changed in the most recent refresh and decide which files to re-download. No API key is required to query this endpoint.

Example response:

          1
          {
        

          2
            "datasetId": "1f13365b-9ae0-69cb-a221-5f8f60d28f6f",
        

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

          4
            "name": "Form MA-W Files Dataset",
        

          5
            "updatedAt": "2026-04-28T03:03:12.815Z",
        

          6
            "earliestSampleDate": "2014-12-01",
        

          7
            "totalRecords": 962,
        

          8
            "totalSize": 3381674,
        

          9
            "formTypes": ["MA-W"],
        

          10
            "containerFormat": "ZIP",
        

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

          12
            "containers": [
        

          13
              {
        

          14
                "downloadUrl": "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-maw-files/2026/2026-04.zip",
        

          15
                "key": "2026/2026-04.zip",
        

          16
                "size": 13818783,
        

          17
                "records": 154,
        

          18
                "updatedAt": "2026-04-28T03:03:12.815Z"
        

          19
              }
        

          20
            ]
        

          21
          }
        

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

Downloads the complete Form MA-W Files Dataset as a single ZIP archive covering all filings from December 2014 to the present. This endpoint requires an API key passed via the token query parameter.

Download Single Container: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-maw-files/2026/2026-04.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY

Downloads one monthly container ZIP instead of the full dataset, which is useful for incremental updates. Replace the year and month segment with any container key listed in the dataset index. This endpoint requires an API key passed via the token query parameter.

Frequently Asked Questions

What form does this dataset cover?

The dataset covers Form MA-W, the notice of withdrawal from registration as a municipal advisor filed under Section 15B of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 15Ba1-4 thereunder. It is the terminal filing in the SEC municipal advisor registration lifecycle and is the counterpart to Form MA (initial application) and Form MA/A (amendment).

What does one record in this dataset represent?

One record is a single complete EDGAR submission of Form MA-W, identified by its 18-digit accession number and packaged as an accession folder containing metadata.json, the structured primary_doc.xml payload in EDGAR's mawfiler schema, and the SEC's XSL-rendered XHTML view at xslFormMA-W_X01/primary_doc.xml. Each accession corresponds to one withdrawal by one registered municipal advisor.

Who is required to file Form MA-W?

The filer is always the registered municipal advisor itself, acting at the firm level to terminate its own SEC registration. Eligible filers include independent municipal advisory firms, solicitors and placement agents, swap and guaranteed-investment-contract advisors, and bank- or broker-dealer-affiliated municipal advisory units that previously registered on Form MA.

When does a firm file Form MA-W?

Filing is event-driven, not periodic. Common triggers include voluntary cessation of municipal advisory business, dissolution or wind-down of the legal entity, mergers or acquisitions, internal reorganizations that move the activity to an affiliated registrant, strategic exits while retaining other registrations, or reliance on a newly applicable exemption. Under Rule 15Ba1-4, the withdrawal becomes effective on the 60th day after filing absent SEC action.

What time period does the dataset cover?

The dataset begins on December 1, 2014, which reflects the first wave of voluntary withdrawals filed shortly after the permanent municipal advisor registration regime took effect on July 1, 2014. Form MA-W has been filed exclusively through EDGAR from inception, so the dataset is the complete electronic record of voluntary municipal advisor withdrawals; SEC-initiated cancellations under Rule 15Ba1-3 and revocations under Section 15B(c)(2) are not included.

What file format is the dataset distributed in?

The dataset is delivered as monthly ZIP containers organized into yearly partitions. The only file types inside each per-accession folder are JSON (the metadata.json envelope) and XML/XHTML (the structured primary_doc.xml and the XSL-rendered view). There are no SGML wrappers, XBRL instances, PDF exhibits, or image files.

How does Form MA-W differ from Form ADV-W?

ADV-W is the closest structural analog and is the investment adviser withdrawal filed under the Advisers Act through IARD, while MA-W is filed under Section 15B of the Exchange Act through EDGAR. MA-W's disclosures around prepaid municipal advisory fees, assigned municipal advisory contracts, and Rule 15Ba1-8 books-and-records custody have no ADV-W counterpart. A dually registered firm must file both; one does not substitute for the other.