Form N-27D-1 Files Dataset

The Form N-27D-1 Files Dataset is an EDGAR archive of every electronic Form N-27D-1 — the segregated trust account accounting prescribed by Rule 27d-1 of the Investment Company Act of 1940 — filed since October 1998. Each record corresponds to a single EDGAR submission identified by its accession number and bundles a normalized metadata.json sidecar with the original SGML-wrapped .txt filing document(s). Filers are the depositors and principal underwriters of periodic payment plan certificate issuers, who use Form N-27D-1 to demonstrate that the segregated trust account backing certificate-holder refund rights under Sections 27(d) and 27(f) of the 1940 Act is adequately funded. Because periodic payment plan certificates are a deprecated retail product whose new sales to U.S. military personnel were prohibited by the Military Personnel Financial Services Protection Act of 2006, the filer population is a small runoff book and the dataset is correspondingly narrow in scope. Coverage runs from October 1998 to the present, and the dataset is distributed as monthly ZIP containers keyed <year>/<year>-<month>.zip containing accession-number folders.

Dataset APIs

Dataset Files

What This Dataset Contains

The dataset packages every electronically filed Form N-27D-1 submission accepted by EDGAR since October 1998. Form N-27D-1 is the SEC-prescribed accounting return required by Rule 27d-1 of the Investment Company Act of 1940. The filer is a depositor or principal underwriter of periodic payment plan certificates, and the form is the vehicle by which that party demonstrates compliance with the segregated-trust-account reserve obligation that backs the statutory refund rights of certificate holders under Sections 27(d) and 27(f) of the Act.

Substantively, a single filing performs four jobs:

1. Identifies the depositor or principal underwriter and the registered investment companies whose plan certificates are covered.
2. Reconciles the segregated trust account from the beginning-of-period balance through deposits, investment results, and refund withdrawals to an end-of-period balance.
3. Compares that ending balance against the minimum reserves required under Rules Rule 27d-1(d) and Rule 27d-1(e) and against the additional threshold gating Rule 27d-1(f)(3) withdrawals.
4. Carries the certification of a senior corporate officer (typically the chief executive officer or chief financial officer) attesting to the accuracy of the accounting and to compliance with the statutory reserve requirements.

Because the form is a niche compliance return tied to a small surviving population of periodic payment plan certificates, the universe of filings is extremely shallow and any given monthly container typically holds only one or two submissions, if any. Earliest sample date is October 1, 1998. The dataset is distributed in monthly ZIP containers; on-disk file types are JSON (the metadata sidecar) and TXT (the SGML-wrapped filing documents).

Content Structure of a Single Record

One record in the Form N-27D-1 Files Dataset corresponds to a single EDGAR submission of Form N-27D-1, identified by its accession number. On disk, that record is a folder named after the accession number with all dashes stripped (for example, accession 0000950129-02-000395 is stored as the directory 000095012902000395). Folders are grouped under year-month parents inside monthly ZIP containers keyed <year>/<year>-<month>.zip. Each accession folder is a self-contained bundle pairing a normalized JSON metadata sidecar with the original SGML-wrapped EDGAR document(s) that constitute the filing. Image attachments from the original submission are excluded; everything else is preserved verbatim.

A record consists of two layers of content, both rooted inside the accession-number folder.

The first layer is metadata.json, a normalized JSON sidecar that summarizes filing-level attributes, lists every document in the EDGAR submission, and enumerates the filing entities. This file is always present.

The second layer is the EDGAR submission content itself: one or more .txt documents holding the SGML-wrapped Form N-27D-1. The primary document is the Form N-27D-1 narrative-and-tabular text. Binary image attachments that occasionally accompany EDGAR submissions are deliberately omitted, so the on-disk document set consists of plain-text SGML files only. The file types present in the dataset are JSON (the metadata sidecar) and TXT (the SGML-wrapped filing documents). Filenames for the primary document are taken verbatim from the issuer's EDGAR submission (for example, h93818n-27d1.txt); no renaming is performed.

The metadata.json sidecar

The metadata sidecar is the structured access layer for the record. Its meaningful fields are:

• formType — fixed at "N-27D-1" for every record in this dataset.
• accessionNo — the canonical dashed accession number (e.g. "0000950129-02-000395").
• filedAt — ISO 8601 timestamp recording when the submission was accepted by EDGAR.
• effectivenessDate and periodOfReport — both populated; periodOfReport is the as-of date of the segregated-trust accounting and is consistently a fiscal year-end (most commonly December 31).
• description — a short human label such as "Form N-27D-1 - Accounting for segregated trust accounts".
• linkToFilingDetails, linkToTxt, linkToHtml — direct EDGAR URLs to the primary document, the complete submission text, and the filing-index HTML page respectively.
• linkToXbrl — empty; Form N-27D-1 does not carry XBRL structured data.
• documentFormatFiles — an array describing every document in the EDGAR submission. Each entry exposes sequence, size (bytes, encoded as a string), documentUrl, description, and type. The first entry is normally the primary N-27D-1 document with type = "N-27D-1"; a trailing entry with blank sequence and blank type represents the complete submission .txt packaged by EDGAR. Image attachments that existed in the original submission are filtered out at the producer level.
• entities — an array of filing parties. Each filer object includes cik, companyName (often with a role suffix such as (Filer)), fileNo, irsNo, act, fiscalYearEnd, filmNo, type, and optionally stateOfIncorporation. The act field is consistently "40", anchoring the filing to the 1940 Act. A single submission frequently lists multiple filer entities because one depositor or principal underwriter (e.g. AIM Distributors, Inc.) may file one Form N-27D-1 covering several related plan registrants — for instance, AIM SUMMIT INVESTORS PLANS I and AIM SUMMIT INVESTORS PLANS II appear as co-filers on a single accession.
• seriesAndClassesContractsInformation — array, typically empty for this form.
• dataFiles — array, typically empty; consistent with the absence of XBRL.
• id — an internal record identifier.

The SGML-wrapped primary document

The primary .txt document is an EDGAR SGML envelope wrapping a plain-ASCII Form N-27D-1. The envelope is the standard EDGAR document wrapper:

          1
          <DOCUMENT>
        

          2
          <TYPE>N-27D-1
        

          3
          <SEQUENCE>1
        

          4
          <FILENAME>h93818n-27d1.txt
        

          5
          <DESCRIPTION>AIM SUMMIT INVESTORS PLANS I & II - 12/31/2001
        

          6
          <TEXT>
        

          7
          <PAGE>
        

          8
                            SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION
        

          9
                                  WASHINGTON, D.C. 20549
        

          10
          
        

          11
                          ACCOUNTING OF  A I M DISTRIBUTORS INC.
        

          12
                          ...
        

          13
          </TEXT>
        

          14
          </DOCUMENT>
        

Inside <TEXT>...</TEXT> the body is fixed-width plain ASCII rather than HTML. The substantive form content is organized into three connected blocks: an identifying header, a tabular segregated-trust accounting schedule, and a certification/signature block.

Identifying header

The header opens with the SEC heading (SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION / WASHINGTON, D.C. 20549) and identifies the depositor or principal underwriter by legal name, IRS Employer Identification Number, and mailing address. It enumerates the registered investment companies whose periodic-payment-plan segregated trust account is being accounted for — frequently more than one, when a single depositor administers multiple related plans. The header also states the report period (typically a calendar or fiscal year ending December 31).

Tabular segregated-trust accounting

The financial substance of the form is a fixed-width table embedded within an SGML <TABLE>...</Table> block. (The closing tag is sometimes rendered in mixed case in the original EDGAR submission; downstream parsers must handle SGML tags case-insensitively.) The table reconciles the segregated trust account across the report period and reports at minimum:

• Balance at beginning of period.
• Deposits, itemized into the categories prescribed by Rule 27d-1: contributions under Rule 27d-1(c), deposits under Rule 27d-1(e), additional discretionary deposits, interest income, realized gains and losses, and unrealized appreciation/depreciation of the trust corpus.
• Withdrawals for refunds, broken out under Rules Rule 27d-1(f)(1), Rule 27d-1(f)(2), and 27d-1(f)(3) — the three statutory withdrawal pathways permitted from the segregated reserve.
• Balance at end of period.
• Minimum reserve amounts required under Rule 27d-1(d) and Rule 27d-1(e), plus the additional threshold balance that must be on hand before any Rule 27d-1(f)(3) withdrawal is permitted.

When a single submission covers multiple plans, the table widens into side-by-side columns showing each plan's figures (for example, Summit I and Summit II), with consistent line-item rows running across.

Certification and signature block

The form closes with the certification by which a senior corporate officer of the depositor or principal underwriter (commonly the CEO or CFO) executes the filing on behalf of the registrant and attests both to the accuracy of the accounting and to compliance with the segregated-reserve requirements of Rule 27d-1. The block carries the officer's printed name, title, signature line, and date. In the SGML text, the signature block is plain ASCII; any wet-ink signature graphic that may have accompanied the original paper or scanned filing is not part of the on-disk record.

Included content

Each record on disk includes the normalized metadata.json sidecar and the SGML-wrapped primary Form N-27D-1 document(s) in their original .txt form, with filenames mirroring the issuer's submission. Because Form N-27D-1 is a single-document compliance return, the document set is small — typically one primary .txt file alongside the metadata sidecar.

Excluded or separate content

Image attachments from the original EDGAR submission (such as scanned signature graphics) are stripped by the dataset producer and do not appear on disk; correspondingly, no GRAPHIC, JPG, or GIF document types reach the on-disk file set. The complete-submission .txt referenced by URL in documentFormatFiles[].documentUrl is not redownloaded into the archive; the on-disk content is the per-document primary file rather than the EDGAR-concatenated submission package. There is no XBRL instance data — linkToXbrl and dataFiles are empty for every record because Form N-27D-1 has never been an XBRL-tagged form. Form N-27D-1 also does not carry the kind of exhibit ecosystem associated with periodic reports such as 10-K or 10-Q, so there is no separate exhibit set to enumerate.

Multi-filer submissions

A structural nuance worth highlighting is that a single Form N-27D-1 record commonly represents the joint filing of one depositor or principal underwriter on behalf of multiple registered investment companies. The entities array in metadata.json enumerates each of these filers with its own cik, fileNo, irsNo, fiscalYearEnd, and (where given) stateOfIncorporation. The primary document mirrors that structure narratively by listing each covered plan in the header and, where applicable, splitting the segregated-trust accounting table into per-plan columns. Treating the record as a single accession-level observation while preserving per-entity granularity through the entities array is the cleanest interpretive frame.

Stability of required content over time

Form N-27D-1 is grounded in Rule 27d-1, a comparatively stable rule whose substantive line items — the deposit and withdrawal categories under Rule 27d-1(d), (e), and (f), and the minimum-reserve thresholds — have remained largely intact across the dataset's coverage. The required content of a record is therefore essentially constant from October 1998 onward: the same beginning balance, categorized deposits, categorized refund withdrawals, ending balance, minimum reserve, and (f)(3) threshold appear in every filing, alongside the officer certification. What varies is principally the filer population (which has shrunk markedly as periodic payment plan certificates fell into disuse) and the number of plans covered per submission.

Stability of data format over time

Form N-27D-1 has been filed as plain-ASCII SGML-wrapped text throughout the dataset's coverage. The form did not migrate to HTML body content the way larger EDGAR filings did, and it has never carried XBRL or inline XBRL data. The on-disk files in this dataset are therefore consistently .txt SGML envelopes wrapping fixed-width financial schedules, paired with the JSON metadata sidecar produced for the dataset. This format stability means that a single parsing approach — open the SGML wrapper, locate the <TABLE> block, parse the fixed-width line items, and capture the surrounding header, certification, and signature text — applies uniformly across the entire archive.

Interpretation and extraction notes

• Accession-number folder naming uses the dash-stripped form (e.g. 000095012902000395), while the canonical dashed form (0000950129-02-000395) appears in metadata.json as accessionNo. Both refer to the same EDGAR submission.
• SGML tag casing is uppercase for opening tags (e.g. <TABLE>) but sometimes mixed case for closing tags (e.g. </Table>); parsers should match tags case-insensitively.
• Fixed-width tables require column-aware parsing rather than HTML table parsing, because the tabular accounting is laid out with whitespace alignment inside the <TEXT> block.
• Multi-filer records must be split by entities if per-registrant analysis is required; accession-level rollups, conversely, should treat the record as one observation regardless of co-filer count.
• Period semantics: periodOfReport is the as-of date of the segregated-trust accounting (typically a fiscal year-end), while filedAt is the EDGAR acceptance timestamp. The two often differ by weeks or months, and filings cluster in the early months of each calendar year despite being annual in cadence.
• No structured financial data: every numeric quantity lives inside the fixed-width text. There is no tagged XBRL layer to exploit, so any structured extraction of reserve balances, deposits, and refund withdrawals must be performed from the SGML text body.

Who Files or Publishes This Dataset, and When

Who files the record

Each Form N-27D-1 record is filed by the depositor or principal underwriter of a periodic payment plan certificate issuer registered as an investment company under the Investment Company Act of 1940. The filer is the sponsor-side entity that arranged the plan and that carries the contingent statutory refund obligation owed to certificate holders who surrender within the early-redemption windows under Section 27(d) and Section 27(f) of the Act. The certificate holder, the unit investment trust issuer, and the underlying mutual fund are not filers.

Filing population

The reporting population is narrow and specialized:

• Depositors of periodic payment plan certificate issuers — entities that organized the unit investment trust through which the certificates are issued and that bear primary statutory responsibility under the 1940 Act.
• Principal underwriters of periodic payment plan certificates — broker-dealer or distributor entities offering the certificates that, under Rule 27d-1, may assume the segregated reserve obligation in lieu of (or alongside) the depositor.

Periodic payment plan certificates are a legacy retail product — long-duration installment contracts in shares of an underlying mutual fund, with front-loaded sales charges, historically marketed to U.S. military personnel and other small investors. The Military Personnel Financial Services Protection Act of 2006 prohibited new sales to members of the U.S. Armed Forces, sharply reducing the active filer base. The dataset accordingly reflects a small set of legacy depositors and underwriters maintaining reserves on a runoff book, not a broad cross-section of investment company filers.

The dataset excludes:

• mutual fund families filing N-CSR, N-PORT, N-CEN, or N-1A
• closed-end funds, ETFs, BDCs, and unit investment trusts that do not issue periodic payment plan certificates
• operating companies with Exchange Act reporting obligations
• registered investment advisers and broker-dealers acting outside the depositor or principal underwriter role

Trigger and reporting obligation

Form N-27D-1 is a periodic compliance accounting, not an event-driven filing. It is filed under Rule 27d-1 of the Investment Company Act of 1940 (17 CFR 270.27d-1) and evidences ongoing compliance with the refund-rights regime in:

• Section 27(d), which gives certain plan certificate holders the right to surrender within an early window and recover a portion of the deducted sales load; and
• Section 27(f), which extends refund rights for plan certificates, including a 45-day notice-and-refund right and a longer surrender-and-partial-refund window.

Because depositors and principal underwriters owe a contingent refund liability tied to the excess sales load previously collected, Rule 27d-1 requires them to maintain a segregated trust account sized to cover potential refunds and to report on that reserve via Form N-27D-1. The triggering condition is the continued existence of outstanding plan certificates with unexpired refund rights — not any single transaction.

Regulatory framework

• Sections 27(d) and 27(f) of the Investment Company Act of 1940 establish the substantive refund rights of plan certificate holders.
• Rule 27d-1 prescribes the reserve mechanism: a segregated trust account funded at the level needed to discharge contingent refund liabilities based on outstanding plans, refundable sales loads, and other prescribed inputs.
• Form N-27D-1 is the SEC-prescribed report on which the depositor or principal underwriter delivers the Rule 27d-1 accounting, including the computed required reserve, the actual segregated balance, and an executive certification.

Section 27 has regulated plan certificates since 1940, but the modern reserve-and-reporting regime traces to the Investment Company Amendments Act of 1970, which restructured front-end loads and refund rights and gave rise to the segregated trust reserve obligation. Electronic filings on EDGAR in this dataset begin in October 1998; earlier Rule 27d-1 accountings were submitted in paper.

Cadence and signature

Filings follow a recurring cadence tied to the reserve maintenance cycle, not a transactional trigger. The depositor or underwriter computes the required reserve as of prescribed measurement dates and submits the accounting so long as outstanding certificates with unexpired refund rights remain.

Each filing must be signed and certified by the chief executive officer or chief financial officer of the depositor or principal underwriter, attesting that the segregated trust account is funded in compliance with Rule 27d-1. The form is filed with — not merely furnished to — the Commission, and the officer-level certification gives it the character of an affirmative compliance representation.

Important distinctions

• Filer vs. issuer vs. holder. The certificate holder is the refund beneficiary but never the filer. The unit investment trust is the registered issuer, but the Rule 27d-1 obligation runs to the depositor or principal underwriter.
• Depositor vs. principal underwriter. Either may be the obligor depending on plan structure; the form identifies the capacity in which the filer acts.
• Versus N-CSR, N-CEN, N-PORT. Those are fund-level financial and holdings reports. Form N-27D-1 is a reserve-compliance accounting filed by the sponsor-side entity, not by the underlying fund.
• Versus N-8B-2 and N-8B-4. Those are registration statements for the plan and the trust. Form N-27D-1 is the ongoing reserve-compliance counterpart.
• Amendments. Corrections or restatements are filed as N-27D-1/A.
• Runoff population. After the 2006 Act and the broader market wind-down, the dataset reflects compliance reporting on a closed legacy book rather than active new issuance.

How This Dataset Differs From Similar Datasets or Filings

Form N-27D-1 occupies a narrow corner of the Investment Company Act regime: a recurring numerical attestation that the segregated trust account backing periodic payment plan certificate refunds satisfies Rule 27d-1. The most useful comparison targets are the registration statements that introduce these vehicles and the periodic reports filed by management investment companies and UITs. Across all of them, N-27D-1 is uniquely defined by three boundaries — regulatory tie (Rule 27d-1), content (reserve attestation), and filer population (periodic payment plan depositors and principal underwriters).

Form N-8B-2 and Form N-8B-4 — registration statements

Form N-8B-2 registers unit investment trusts, including those issuing periodic payment plan certificates. Form N-8B-4 (now largely historical) registered face-amount certificate companies and certain periodic payment plan structures. Both describe the offering: trust indenture, sales load schedule, refund mechanics under Sections 27(d) and 27(f), and the identity of depositor and principal underwriter.

• Overlap: same depositor/underwriter population; N-27D-1 evidences ongoing compliance with reserve obligations created by structures registered on these forms.
• Distinction: registration statements are one-time (with amendments) narrative disclosures establishing what the plan is. N-27D-1 is a recurring numerical demonstration that the issuer holds enough cash to honor the refund right the registration created.

Form N-CSR — certified shareholder reports

Form N-CSR carries the semi-annual and annual financial statements, schedules of investments, and Sarbanes-Oxley certifications of management investment companies.

• Overlap: both are periodic Investment Company Act submissions containing officer certifications.
• Distinction: N-CSR covers full financial condition and portfolio of mutual funds and closed-end funds; its filer universe is management investment companies. N-27D-1 contains no financials or holdings — only the Rule 27d-1 reserve calculation, the segregated account balance, and a certification limited to that reserve. Filer populations barely intersect: N-CSR filers are management companies, N-27D-1 filers are periodic payment plan depositors/underwriters of UIT-structured plans.

Form N-CEN — annual census report

Form N-CEN is the structured annual census filed by registered investment companies and UITs (replacing N-SAR), capturing service providers, fund type, share classes, lending activity, and similar attributes.

• Overlap: a periodic payment plan UIT may file both N-CEN and N-27D-1 in the same year; both are recurring Investment Company Act compliance reports.
• Distinction: N-CEN is a wide, XML-tagged census of fund attributes. N-27D-1 is a free-form, single-purpose reserve attestation. N-CEN tells you what a fund is; N-27D-1 tells you whether one specific statutory reserve is funded.

Form N-PORT — monthly portfolio holdings

Form N-PORT is the structured monthly portfolio report filed by registered management investment companies, with the third month of each quarter made public.

• Overlap: both are periodic Investment Company Act reports.
• Distinction: filer populations differ (management companies vs. periodic payment plan depositors/underwriters). Content does not overlap at all — N-PORT carries position-level holdings, valuation, and risk metrics; N-27D-1 carries no portfolio data. The two answer entirely different supervisory questions.

Form N-MFP — money market fund holdings

Form N-MFP is the monthly structured holdings and risk report filed by money market funds under Rule 30b1-7.

• Overlap: both are narrow, rule-specific Investment Company Act reports.
• Distinction: N-MFP is granular structured portfolio and risk data for a specific fund type (money market funds); N-27D-1 is a reserve attestation for a different fund type (periodic payment plan certificates). No filer or content overlap.

Form N-18F-1 and other rule-specific notices

The Investment Company Act includes a family of rule-implementing notices — Form N-18F-1 (Rule 18f-1 election to redeem in kind), N-17D-1 (joint transaction reports under Rule 17d-1), N-17F-1 and N-17F-2 (custody reports), among others.

• Overlap: same regulatory pattern — one substantive rule, one dedicated compliance form.
• Distinction: each form is tied to its own rule and filer trigger. N-27D-1 is uniquely the Rule 27d-1 segregated-trust-account filing; none of these adjacent rule-specific forms substitute for it.

(Form N-Q, the legacy quarterly holdings report retired in favor of N-PORT, is mentioned only to confirm N-27D-1 is not a holdings disclosure of any vintage.)

Boundary summary

N-27D-1 is distinguished from every nearby dataset along three dimensions simultaneously:

1. Regulatory tie: implements Rule 27d-1 under Sections 27(d) and 27(f); no other form addresses the periodic payment plan refund-reserve obligation.
2. Content: a numerical reserve calculation, segregated account balance, and narrow officer certification — not portfolio (N-PORT, N-MFP, legacy N-Q), not financial statements (N-CSR), not census attributes (N-CEN), not offering structure (N-8B-2, N-8B-4).
3. Filer population: depositors and principal underwriters of periodic payment plan certificates — a small, declining subset distinct from the management investment companies that dominate N-CSR, N-PORT, and N-MFP.

N-27D-1 cannot be substituted by any other dataset for evidence of periodic-payment-plan refund-reserve compliance. It complements, rather than overlaps, the registration-stage (N-8B-2/N-8B-4) and ongoing reporting (N-CSR, N-CEN) datasets that cover the same issuers from different angles.

Who Uses This Dataset

Because Form N-27D-1 is a narrow Rule 27d-1 compliance series tied to a sunset retail product, its users are correspondingly specialized. Across every user group, the load-bearing fields are the same: depositor or principal underwriter identity, the reserve calculation, the segregated trust account balance, filing cadence, and the CEO/CFO certification. The dataset's value is archival completeness for a narrow statutory regime, not scale.

Compliance officers at surviving depositors and principal underwriters

Use prior filings as templates for the next annual certification. They focus on the reserve calculation worksheet, segregated trust account balance, refundable sales load inputs, and CEO/CFO attestation language to keep year-over-year methodology and signatory practice consistent.

Investment company counsel

Securities lawyers advising depositors, underwriters, or custodial trustees pull historical N-27D-1 filings when a plan is being run off, transferred, or terminated. They use the filing record to confirm Sections 27(d)/27(f) reserve obligations were met each year and to assemble a clean compliance trail for winding-up transactions or regulatory inquiries.

SEC examination and rule-administration staff

Use the full population to confirm timely filing, appropriate executive signatories, and reserve balances consistent with the Rule 27d-1 formula. Supports inspection planning and exemptive or no-action review tied to the remaining universe of filers.

Forensic accountants and reserve-adequacy experts

On disputes or restructurings touching periodic payment plans, they reconcile certified reserve balances against custodial records, test sales-load inputs, and produce expert reports or reserve-adequacy opinions grounded in the historical filings.

Internal audit at surviving filers

Scope annual reviews around the CEO/CFO attestation, confirming that workpapers, ledger balances, and reserve formulas tie back to what was filed.

Investment Company Act academics and financial historians

Faculty and policy researchers use the filings as primary-source evidence of how Sections 27(d) and 27(f) operate in practice and to track the long-tail runoff of a deprecated retail product. Depositor identity, annual reserve balances, and certification text support case studies, statutory commentary, and quantitative wind-down analysis.

RegTech and compliance-platform vendors

Ingest the series for form-coverage completeness in Investment Company Act filing trackers and compliance calendars. The metadata file, accession numbers, filer identifiers, and document structure matter more than the substance; low-volume forms are exactly where coverage gaps surface.

LLM and RAG developers building Investment Company Act corpora

Include N-27D-1 to make retrieval systems statute-complete. Certification narratives and reserve calculations supply scarce examples for Rule 27d-1 and segregated-trust mechanics that are hard to source elsewhere.

Specific Use Cases

The dataset is small and single-purpose, so its use cases are narrow and operational rather than analytical at scale.

Drafting the next annual reserve attestation

Compliance staff at a surviving depositor or principal underwriter open the prior accession's primary .txt document to copy the header layout, the Rule 27d-1(d)/(e)/(f) line-item structure of the segregated-trust accounting table, and the CEO/CFO certification language. The current year's beginning balance is reconciled to the prior filing's ending balance, and the signatory title and attestation wording are kept consistent year over year.

Assembling a wind-down or transfer compliance trail

Investment company counsel handling the runoff, transfer, or termination of a periodic payment plan pulls every N-27D-1 filed by the depositor across the dataset and reads each year's ending balance, minimum-reserve figure under Rule 27d-1(d)/(e), and the (f)(3) threshold. The accession-level sequence becomes the documentary spine of a Sections 27(d)/27(f) compliance trail attached to a wind-up agreement or a response to an SEC inquiry.

Reserve-adequacy reconciliation in disputes

A forensic accountant retained on a periodic-payment-plan dispute extracts the categorized deposits (contributions, (e) deposits, interest, gains/losses, unrealized appreciation) and the (f)(1)/(f)(2)/(f)(3) refund withdrawals from the fixed-width SGML table, then ties each line to custodial ledger entries and sales-load workpapers. Discrepancies between the certified figures and the underlying records feed directly into an expert report.

Per-plan splits from multi-filer accessions

Researchers and counsel working on AIM Summit-style joint filings use the entities array in metadata.json to split one accession into per-registrant observations, then map the side-by-side Summit I / Summit II columns in the primary document back to each CIK. The output is a tidy per-plan, per-year reserve table built from accession-level records.

Filing-coverage completeness for Investment Company Act trackers

RegTech vendors ingest the full series into Investment Company Act filing calendars and form-coverage dashboards using formType, accessionNo, filedAt, periodOfReport, and the entities[].cik and fileNo values. Because Rule 27d-1 filings are sparse and easily missed, the dataset closes a known gap in monitoring tools that already cover N-CEN, N-CSR, and N-PORT.

Statute-complete retrieval corpora for Investment Company Act LLMs

Teams building RAG systems over Investment Company Act material include the SGML bodies as scarce worked examples of Rule 27d-1 segregated-reserve mechanics and Sections 27(d)/27(f) certification language. The certification block and the categorized deposit/withdrawal table give retrieval systems concrete answers to questions about periodic-payment-plan reserve compliance that cannot be sourced from N-CSR, N-CEN, or N-PORT.

Dataset Access

Dataset Index JSON API: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-n27d1-files.json

This endpoint returns dataset metadata, including the name, description, last updated timestamp, earliest sample date (1998-10-01), total records and total size, form types covered (N-27D-1), the container format (ZIP), and file types (TXT, JSON). It also returns the download URL for the full dataset archive and the full list of individual container files, each with its size, record count, last updated timestamp, and download URL. This endpoint does not require an API key. It can be polled regularly to identify which containers were updated in the most recent refresh, allowing downstream pipelines to download only the containers that changed.

          1
          {
        

          2
            "datasetId": "1f13365b-9ae0-6a55-bbdb-eeafff65c749",
        

          3
            "datasetDownloadUrl": "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-n27d1-files.zip",
        

          4
            "name": "Form N-27D-1 Files Dataset",
        

          5
            "updatedAt": "2026-04-16T08:46:03.296Z",
        

          6
            "earliestSampleDate": "1998-10-01",
        

          7
            "totalRecords": 12,
        

          8
            "totalSize": 30748,
        

          9
            "formTypes": ["N-27D-1"],
        

          10
            "containerFormat": "ZIP",
        

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

          12
            "containers": [
        

          13
              {
        

          14
                "downloadUrl": "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-n27d1-files/2026/2026-03.zip",
        

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

          16
                "size": 13818783,
        

          17
                "records": 154,
        

          18
                "updatedAt": "2026-04-16T08:46:03.296Z"
        

          19
              }
        

          20
            ]
        

          21
          }
        

Download Entire Dataset: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-n27d1-files.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY

Downloads the complete dataset as a single ZIP archive containing every Form N-27D-1 filing from October 1998 to the present. This endpoint requires an API key.

Download Single Container: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-n27d1-files/2026/2026-03.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY

Downloads a single monthly container instead of the full dataset, keyed by year and year-month as listed in the dataset index. This endpoint requires an API key.

Frequently Asked Questions

What form does this dataset cover?

The dataset covers Form N-27D-1, the SEC-prescribed segregated-trust-account accounting return required by Rule 27d-1 of the Investment Company Act of 1940. Every record in the dataset has formType fixed at "N-27D-1", and amendments are filed as N-27D-1/A.

What does one record in this dataset represent?

One record corresponds to a single EDGAR submission of Form N-27D-1, identified by its accession number and stored on disk as a folder named after the dash-stripped accession (for example, 000095012902000395). Each accession folder contains a normalized metadata.json sidecar plus the original SGML-wrapped .txt filing document(s).

Who is required to file Form N-27D-1?

Form N-27D-1 is filed by the depositor or principal underwriter of a periodic payment plan certificate issuer registered under the Investment Company Act of 1940. The certificate holder, the unit investment trust issuer, and the underlying mutual fund are not filers; the obligation runs to the sponsor-side entity that bears the contingent statutory refund liability under Sections 27(d) and 27(f).

What time period does the dataset cover?

The dataset covers electronic Form N-27D-1 filings on EDGAR from October 1, 1998 to the present. Earlier Rule 27d-1 accountings were submitted in paper and are outside the scope of this dataset.

What file format is the dataset distributed in?

The dataset is distributed as monthly ZIP containers keyed <year>/<year>-<month>.zip. Inside each container, accession-number folders hold two file types: JSON (the metadata.json sidecar) and TXT (the SGML-wrapped Form N-27D-1 documents). Image attachments from the original EDGAR submissions are stripped, and there is no XBRL data because Form N-27D-1 has never been an XBRL-tagged form.

How does Form N-27D-1 differ from N-CSR, N-CEN, or N-PORT?

N-CSR, N-CEN, and N-PORT are fund-level reports filed by management investment companies covering financial statements, census attributes, and portfolio holdings respectively. Form N-27D-1 contains none of that content — only a Rule 27d-1 reserve calculation, the segregated account balance, and a CEO/CFO certification — and its filer population is depositors and principal underwriters of periodic payment plan certificates rather than management companies.

Why are there so few records in this dataset?

Periodic payment plan certificates are a deprecated retail product. The Military Personnel Financial Services Protection Act of 2006 prohibited new sales to U.S. military personnel, and the broader market wound down, leaving a small set of legacy depositors and underwriters maintaining reserves on a runoff book. The dataset reflects this narrow surviving filer population, not a broad cross-section of investment company filers.