The Form N-8B-2 Files Dataset is a collection of every Form N-8B-2 and Form N-8B-2/A registration statement filed on EDGAR by unit investment trusts (UITs) other than insurance company separate accounts, including issuers of periodic payment plan certificates. One record is one EDGAR submission, identified by a single accession number and materialized as a folder containing a metadata.json envelope plus the registrant's original documents — the primary N-8B-2 or N-8B-2/A registration statement and its exhibits — with image binaries deliberately omitted. The underlying form is the long-form registration statement prescribed by Section 8(b) of the Investment Company Act of 1940, filed by the trust (with the depositor preparing and signing on its behalf) within three months of the Section 8(a) notification on Form N-8A, and amended via N-8B-2/A whenever previously registered content needs updating. EDGAR coverage in this dataset begins in January 1994 and continues through the latest monthly refresh, distributed as monthly ZIP containers under a YYYY/YYYY-MM.zip naming convention.
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This dataset packages the complete EDGAR submissions for Form N-8B-2 (the original Section 8(b) registration statement for non-separate-account UITs) and Form N-8B-2/A (its amendment variant). Each record is one accession: the EDGAR submission header captured as a metadata.json envelope, plus the actual documents the registrant transmitted — typically the primary registration-statement document and any attached exhibits — stored byte-for-byte as EDGAR disseminated them. The accession folder is named after the 18-digit accession number with dashes stripped (for example, 000199937125007794), and accession folders are grouped into monthly ZIP containers under a YYYY/YYYY-MM.zip path scheme.
The dataset covers the full population of N-8B-2 and N-8B-2/A filings disseminated by EDGAR from January 1994 forward, encompassing the transition from EDGAR's plain-text era to modern HTML. File types present in the dataset are TXT, JSON, HTML, and PDF: metadata.json is the JSON envelope; primary registration-statement documents are overwhelmingly .htm/.html in the modern era, with .txt appearing in the earlier portion of the archive and .pdf appearing sporadically. Image binaries referenced from HTML documents are excluded by design.
Because N-8B-2 is a niche Investment Company Act form, the dataset's overall population is small relative to mainstream registration-statement datasets. Current totals, per-month volumes, and refresh timestamps are surfaced dynamically by the dataset overview rather than embedded in this prose.
One record in the Form N-8B-2 Files Dataset is one EDGAR submission of Form N-8B-2 or Form N-8B-2/A by a unit investment trust, identified by a single accession number and materialized as a dedicated folder named after that accession (the 18-digit identifier with dashes stripped, e.g. 000199937125007794). Inside the folder sits one metadata.json describing the EDGAR submission header alongside the actual documents the registrant transmitted to EDGAR for that accession — typically the primary N-8B-2 or N-8B-2/A registration-statement document and any attached exhibits — with image binaries deliberately omitted. Accession folders are grouped into monthly ZIP containers under a YYYY/YYYY-MM.zip path scheme, so reading a single record means opening one accession-numbered subdirectory and treating its metadata.json plus document files as one atomic registration-statement submission.
Form N-8B-2 is the long-form registration statement that Section 8(b) of the Investment Company Act of 1940 prescribes for unit investment trusts (UITs) currently issuing securities and not organized as separate accounts of insurance companies. It is the principal registration document for UITs other than separate accounts, including issuers of periodic payment plan certificates, and must be filed within three months of the trust's Section 8(a) notification of registration on Form N-8A.
A UIT, by statutory definition, is an unmanaged investment company organized under a trust indenture or similar instrument that issues only redeemable securities representing undivided interests in a fixed portfolio of specified securities. Because the trust is unmanaged and the portfolio is set at creation, Form N-8B-2 emphasizes structural and contractual disclosures — the identity and organization of the depositor, the trustee, the evaluator, and the principal underwriter; the trust indenture and the governing instrument; the mechanics of distribution, redemption, valuation, and substitution — rather than the management-oriented disclosures characteristic of managed-fund registrations.
Form N-8B-2/A is the amendment variant. Amendments appear in the dataset in exactly the same container shape as originals; the /A suffix on formType is the only structural marker. Sequential N-8B-2/A filings are how serial UIT sponsors and periodic-payment-plan issuers keep the underlying registration current as terms, personnel, contractual relationships, financial statements, or portfolio valuations change over the life of the trust, and individual filers commonly produce many sequential amendments to a single N-8B-2 registration over time.
A record has two structural layers:
The filing-header layer, captured as metadata.json. A single JSON object mirroring the EDGAR submission header for the accession: form code, accession number, filing timestamps, links back to EDGAR-hosted versions of the submission, a manifest of the documents in the submission, an entities array identifying the filer and related parties, and slots for optional structured payloads.
The document layer, captured as one or more native EDGAR document files inside the same accession folder. The primary document is the N-8B-2 or N-8B-2/A registration statement itself, almost always an .htm/.html file in the modern era and occasionally a plain-text or PDF rendition. Additional documents represent exhibits and other attachments to the original submission. Each document is stored verbatim as EDGAR disseminated it, including the SGML <DOCUMENT> envelope that wraps every submission attachment.
The two layers are tightly linked: every numbered entry in documentFormatFiles corresponds one-to-one with a <DOCUMENT> block inside the submission, sharing the same <TYPE>, <SEQUENCE>, <FILENAME>, and <DESCRIPTION> values.
metadata.json carries the EDGAR-side facts about the submission as a flat JSON object:
formType — EDGAR form code, either "N-8B-2" or "N-8B-2/A".accessionNo — the dashed 18-digit accession number (e.g. "0001999371-25-007794"); the folder name is the same identifier with dashes removed.filedAt — ISO-8601 timestamp with timezone offset marking EDGAR acceptance.effectivenessDate — the effective date associated with the registration filing.description — short human-readable form description (e.g. "Form N-8B-2/A - Registration statement for unit investment trusts: [Amend]").linkToFilingDetails — URL to the primary document on SEC.gov.linkToTxt — URL to the complete-submission .txt aggregate on EDGAR.linkToHtml — URL to the EDGAR filing index page for the accession.linkToXbrl — URL to an XBRL instance document if any; routinely empty for this form type.documentFormatFiles — array describing each document in the submission. Each entry carries sequence, size (string, bytes), documentUrl, description, and type. The complete-submission .txt aggregate also appears as an extra entry with a blank sequence and a blank type, which is how it is distinguished from the numbered primary and exhibit documents.dataFiles — array reserved for structured-data attachments; routinely empty for N-8B-2.seriesAndClassesContractsInformation — array describing series/class/contract structures used by certain fund forms; routinely empty for N-8B-2.entities — array of filer and related-party records. Each entity object carries companyName (with a parenthesized role suffix such as "(Filer)"), cik, irsNo, fileNo (the Investment Company Act file number, typically in the 811- series), filmNo (the EDGAR film accession), type (the per-entity form code), act (Investment Company Act code "40"), stateOfIncorporation, and fiscalYearEnd (MMDD).id — opaque hex identifier for the record.datasetId and datasetDownloadUrl may appear at the dataset envelope level rather than inside individual record metadata.The entities array is plural because a UIT submission can name multiple related parties — the trust as filer, the depositor or sponsor, and sometimes a trustee or evaluator — though many records carry only the trust as filer, with the depositor and other contractual parties named only inside the registration-statement body.
<DOCUMENT> envelopeEach non-metadata file inside an accession folder is one of the documents the registrant attached to the EDGAR submission, stored byte-for-byte as EDGAR received and disseminated it. The file-types found in the dataset are TXT, JSON, HTML, and PDF. In modern records the primary registration-statement document is overwhelmingly an .htm HTML file; JSON is restricted to metadata.json; .txt documents appear in the earlier portion of the archive; and .pdf documents appear when a registrant filed a PDF rendition. Image binaries referenced from the HTML are excluded by design.
Every document file retains the EDGAR SGML envelope: a <DOCUMENT> opening tag, a short header block, and a <TEXT> block containing the actual payload:
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<DOCUMENT>
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<TYPE>N-8B-2/A
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<SEQUENCE>1
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<FILENAME>adt-n8b2a_061625.htm
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<DESCRIPTION>AMENDMENT TO FORM N-8B-2/A
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<TEXT>
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<HTML>
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... full HTML body of the registration statement ...
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</HTML>
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</TEXT>
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</DOCUMENT>
<TYPE> carries the EDGAR document-type code (N-8B-2, N-8B-2/A, or an EX-* exhibit code); <SEQUENCE> carries the document order within the submission; <FILENAME> carries the registrant-supplied filename verbatim (no normalization is applied — names like adt-n8b2a_061625.htm flow through unchanged); and <DESCRIPTION> carries a free-text caption. These four fields align one-to-one with the corresponding documentFormatFiles entry in metadata.json, giving a stable cross-reference between the header manifest and the on-disk file.
The N-8B-2 is organized around a numbered set of items prescribed by the form's instructions under the Investment Company Act, supplemented by required exhibits and required financial statements. The disclosure is heavily contractual and structural rather than performance-oriented, reflecting the fixed-portfolio, unmanaged nature of UITs. The principal content blocks that recur across N-8B-2 filings are:
Organization and personnel of the depositor. The depositor (the entity that organized the trust and deposited the underlying securities): form of organization, state of incorporation, capital structure, officers, directors, and affiliations with any larger sponsor group. This block establishes the chain of corporate authority behind the trust.
Organization of the trust. The trust itself: name, state and form of organization, date and manner of creation, the trust indenture or other governing instrument, and the capital structure of the units issued. For periodic-payment-plan certificates this section also describes the plan structure and the certificates being offered.
Trustee and custodian. Identification of the trustee (and, where separate, the custodian); the trustee's qualifications and capital structure; compensation arrangements; and the contractual terms governing trustee duties, replacement, and removal. For UITs this is structurally central because the trustee — not a board of directors or investment adviser — is the principal ongoing fiduciary actor.
Distribution and redemption of securities. The mechanics by which units are offered to the public: public-offering price formula, underwriting and distribution arrangements, sales-load schedules and volume discounts, secondary-market arrangements if any, and the redemption procedure under which holders surrender units to the trustee for cash at net asset value. For periodic-payment-plan certificates this section also covers installment-payment mechanics, deductions, surrender values, and the relationship between gross payments and the principal amount actually invested.
Portfolio and investment policy. The securities deposited into the trust, the (narrowly circumscribed) policies governing portfolio changes, and any provisions for substitution, sale, or redemption of portfolio securities.
Offering valuation of securities held in the trust. A statement, as of a stated date, of the securities held by the trust and their valuation for offering purposes, showing how the public-offering price was computed from the underlying portfolio's evaluated value plus sales load and accrued charges.
Information about other parties. Identification of any evaluator, insurance provider, principal underwriter, sponsor, or other party with a contractual role in the trust's operation, plus a description of the contractual terms governing their compensation and duties.
Tax status and legal matters. Federal income tax treatment of the trust and the certificate holders; identification of counsel and other professionals.
Financial statements. Audited financial statements of the trust (or, for a new trust, of the depositor and any trust assets as of inception), conforming to the form's instructions on which statements are required and as of what dates.
Signatures. Signatures of the depositor (and trustee where required) attesting to the registration statement.
Exhibits. A defined list including the trust indenture or agreement, the underwriting or distribution agreements, the form of certificate, consents of independent accountants and counsel, and other constitutive documents. These appear as separate <DOCUMENT> blocks inside the EDGAR submission, each typed with the appropriate EX-* code.
Within an N-8B-2/A amendment, the content layout typically replicates the original form's structure but is scoped to the items being amended; cover or introductory text identifies the amendment number and the items modified. Sequential amendments to the same trust often update only the financial statements, the offering valuation table, or specific personnel and contractual items, while preserving the underlying registration on file. Some amendments are very short — only the amended pages plus a cover — which is why the primary document inside a record can range from a few kilobytes to a multi-hundred-kilobyte full restatement.
For one accession, a record packages:
metadata.json;<DOCUMENT> envelope intact;.txt aggregate that EDGAR generates for each accession is referenced from metadata.json (and listed as the blank-sequence entry in documentFormatFiles) but is not separately materialized inside the accession folder; the constituent documents are present as individual files instead.The N-8B-2 is one of the older Investment Company Act registration forms and its item-level structure has been comparatively stable since the early decades of the 1940 Act. The most material interpretive point is the relationship between N-8B-2 and the prospectus regime under Form S-6: a registered UIT typically files an N-8B-2 as the foundational registration statement under the Investment Company Act and then offers its units publicly via a Form S-6 prospectus under the Securities Act of 1933, with the S-6 drawing extensively on the N-8B-2 disclosures. As a result, much of the prospectus-style narrative is incorporated by reference between the two filings, and the N-8B-2 functions as the static, contractual backbone while the S-6 carries the dynamic offering content. Amendments via N-8B-2/A have become the dominant filing pattern because they let long-running series trusts and periodic-payment-plan sponsors keep one underlying registration current rather than re-registering.
The dataset spans EDGAR filings from January 1994 onward, encompassing the transition from EDGAR's plain-text era to modern HTML. In the earliest portion of the archive, N-8B-2 documents appear as ASCII text wrapped in the SGML <DOCUMENT> envelope, sometimes with tables rendered in fixed-width character art and financial schedules formatted as monospaced columns. From the late 1990s onward, registrants migrated to HTML inside the same SGML envelope, with tables expressed as <TABLE> elements and richer typographic formatting. PDF renditions appear sporadically. Across all eras, the SGML wrapper (<DOCUMENT>/<TYPE>/<SEQUENCE>/<FILENAME>/<DESCRIPTION>/<TEXT>) is preserved, giving parsers a consistent envelope regardless of the inner payload format.
documentFormatFiles entries align one-to-one with the SGML <DOCUMENT> blocks inside each on-disk file via sequence, type, and filename; this is the reliable way to map a metadata row to a document. The blank-sequence / blank-type entry is the complete-submission .txt aggregate and does not correspond to a file inside the accession folder.<TYPE> rather than by filename pattern.entities array, with the depositor, trustee, sponsor, evaluator, and other contractual parties named only inside the registration-statement body. Building a full party graph for a trust requires parsing the document content, not just the metadata header.linkToXbrl, dataFiles, and seriesAndClassesContractsInformation are routinely empty for N-8B-2 records; their emptiness reflects that these structured-payload slots do not apply to this form type, not missing data.accessionNo field uses the dashed form (0001999371-25-007794) while the folder name uses the undashed form (000199937125007794); both refer to the same EDGAR accession.Each record is a Form N-8B-2 registration statement (or N-8B-2/A amendment) filed on EDGAR in the name of a unit investment trust (UIT) other than a separate account. The trust is the registrant. In operational practice the filing is prepared and signed by the trust's depositor (the sponsor that organizes the trust and deposits the underlying portfolio) with the trustee or custodian named as a key disclosed party. Neither the depositor nor the trustee is itself the registrant.
The filer population consists of:
Under Section 4(2) of the 1940 Act, a UIT is an investment company organized under a trust indenture or contract of custodianship, has no board of directors, and issues only redeemable securities representing an undivided interest in a unit of specified securities.
Two events generate records:
Initial Form N-8B-2. Section 8(a) of the Investment Company Act of 1940 requires each investment company to file a short notification of registration (historically Form N-8A). Section 8(b) then requires the registrant to file a full registration statement on the form the Commission prescribes for its organizational type. For a UIT other than a separate account, that form is N-8B-2, and it must be filed within three months of the Section 8(a) notification. The N-8B-2 is registration-driven, not periodic.
Form N-8B-2/A amendments. Filed whenever previously registered content requires updating: changes in the depositor's organization, officers, or affiliated persons; changes of trustee or custodian; modifications to the trust indenture; updates to distribution, redemption, or valuation arrangements; refreshed financial statements; or corrections responsive to SEC review. Because UITs do not file the periodic reports used by managed funds, the N-8B-2/A is the principal vehicle for keeping continuing registration disclosure current. Amendments have no fixed cadence.
EDGAR coverage in this dataset begins in January 1994, tracking the phase-in of mandatory electronic filing. The underlying 1940 Act §8(b) obligation dates to the 1940 Act itself; pre-EDGAR paper N-8B-2 filings are not included.
Form N-8B-2's closest neighbors are the other N-series registration forms, the Securities Act companion that registers the units themselves (Form S-6), and the annual fee filing UITs make after registration (Form 24F-2). Each targets a distinct combination of issuer type, product structure, and statutory purpose.
S-6 is the direct companion to N-8B-2 and the single most important pairing. N-8B-2 registers the UIT as an investment company under the 1940 Act (entity-level §8(b) registration); S-6 registers the units offered to investors under the 1933 Act and produces the prospectus delivered at sale. The same trust uses both: S-6 incorporates substantial portions of the N-8B-2 registration statement by reference, so the filings are complementary, not redundant. Use S-6 for the offering and prospectus content; use N-8B-2 for the underlying organizational, depositor, trustee, portfolio, and redemption disclosures that S-6 leans on.
N-4 is the form most easily confused with N-8B-2 because both involve UIT structures. The dividing line is the separate-account carve-out: N-8B-2 covers standalone UITs and is explicitly unavailable to insurance company separate accounts, while N-4 is used by separate accounts organized as UITs that fund variable annuity contracts. Disclosure focus also diverges sharply — N-4 centers on the annuity contract, sub-accounts, mortality and expense charges, and death benefits, whereas N-8B-2 centers on the trust indenture, depositor, trustee, deposited portfolio, and unit redemption mechanics.
N-6 is the life-insurance analogue to N-4, used by separate accounts organized as UITs that fund variable life contracts. It sits outside N-8B-2 for the same reason as N-4: any UIT that is an insurance separate account files N-4 or N-6, never N-8B-2.
N-3 covers insurance separate accounts structured as management investment companies (rather than UITs), typically supporting managed variable annuity sub-accounts. It is doubly distinct from N-8B-2: it is both a separate-account form and a management-company form. It is listed here only to complete the variable-product map (N-3 / N-4 / N-6) that N-8B-2 sits outside of.
Form N-8B-4 is the sibling §8(b) registration form, sharing N-8B-2's statutory hook and one-time-plus-amendments cadence. The difference is issuer class: N-8B-4 covers face-amount certificate companies, which issue debt-like instruments payable at a fixed amount at maturity, while N-8B-2 covers trusts that hold a specified portfolio and issue undivided interests. Non-overlapping filer populations.
N-1A is the modern registration form for managed open-end management companies. It shares only the general 1940 Act registration purpose with N-8B-2. N-1A issuers have a board, an investment adviser, an actively managed portfolio, and a continuously updated prospectus; N-8B-2 issuers are unmanaged trusts with a depositor and trustee and a fixed or semi-fixed portfolio, with no adviser in the N-1A sense. The disclosure schemas are not interchangeable.
N-2 registers actively managed closed-end management companies whose shares typically trade on an exchange after an IPO. Like N-1A, it is a management-company form and uses an entirely different disclosure framework from N-8B-2's unmanaged-trust model. Useful as a contrast point, not a substitute.
Form N-14 registers securities issued in fund mergers, reorganizations, or other business combinations. It intersects N-8B-2 only when a UIT participates in a reorganization, and even then it is transaction-specific and one-off rather than a substitute for the underlying entity registration.
24F-2 is the annual fee filing UITs and open-end funds use to pay registration fees based on net sales for the prior fiscal year. It shares N-8B-2's filer population but is a short, recurring fee calculation rather than a substantive registration statement. Pair the two when tracking ongoing sales volume against the registered entity.
N-8B-2 occupies a narrow slot: standalone UITs (including periodic payment plan certificate issuers) that are not face-amount certificate companies, not managed funds, and not insurance separate accounts. It captures entity-level §8(b) disclosure — depositor, trustee, distribution and redemption mechanics, deposited portfolio, and financial statements — and is filed once per trust with N-8B-2/A amendments thereafter. For a complete view of a UIT, pair it with S-6 for the offering document and 24F-2 for annual sales volume; treat N-4 and N-6 as the parallel regime for insurance-linked UITs rather than as alternatives.
The Form N-8B-2 Files Dataset is consumed by specialists who need authoritative trust-level disclosure on depositors, trustees, evaluators, indentures, sales-load mechanics, and certificate terms.
Outside and in-house securities lawyers draft new registration statements and amendments (N-8B-2/A) when sponsor identity, indenture terms, trustee arrangements, or distribution mechanics change. They mine peer filings for item-by-item precedent on depositor organization, trust indenture form, sales load, creation and redemption procedures, and periodic payment plan certificate terms, then attach the trust agreement and distribution agreement as exhibits. Output: registration drafts, amendment packages, and comment-letter responses.
Product, structuring, and legal teams at trust sponsors benchmark how peer depositors describe organization, capitalization, adviser affiliations, and unit issuance economics. They read the personnel, affiliations, and control-person items to align their own disclosure. Supports product design, supplemental prospectus drafting, and consistency checks between filed disclosure and current operations.
Administration staff treat the on-file N-8B-2 as the authoritative description of how each trust was constituted. They reference trustee, custodian, and evaluator designations, unit creation and redemption procedures, sales-load schedules, and portfolio composition rules to onboard legacy trusts, reconcile practice to the registration, and write internal procedure manuals tied to specific filings.
Compliance officers at firms distributing periodic payment plan certificates or UIT units verify trust registration status, confirm disclosed sales-charge mechanics, and document the principal underwriter's role and any refund or surrender rights. Supports suitability reviews, representative training, and SRO supervisory recordkeeping.
Investment-management examiners and accountants in the regulator's investment-management function use the dataset as the primary reference when reviewing UIT filings, processing no-action requests, and tracking the registered-trust population. They focus on completeness of the original filing, the chronology of N-8B-2/A amendments, financial-statement exhibits, and affiliated-transaction disclosure. Supports comment letters, sweep examinations, and longitudinal disclosure analysis.
Third-party administrators confirm the contractual scope they inherit when taking over a trust. They read the depositor, evaluator, auditor, and trustee items along with service-agreement exhibits to support transition planning, fee benchmarking, and operational due diligence before accepting a mandate.
Transfer agents servicing UITs reference the items on unit sales, redemption, transfer restrictions, and distribution calculation to reconcile their unit-holder recordkeeping and payment workflows against the registered terms.
Banks acting as UIT trustee or custodian maintain authoritative copies of their own appointment terms and review peer trustee provisions, fee schedules, and indenture clauses when bidding on new mandates. Supports new-business analysis, fiduciary risk acceptance, and ongoing review of long-lived trusts.
Specialist analysts covering UITs read portfolio-composition items, deposit and substitution rules, sales-load and creation-unit mechanics, and depositor affiliations to assess how a trust will behave through its life cycle. Supports internal research notes, comparative trust selection, and structural classification databases.
Researchers study the registered-UIT population, the decline of periodic payment plans, sponsor concentration, and the evolution of trust-level disclosure using both substantive items and the timing pattern of N-8B-2 versus N-8B-2/A filings.
Engineers at fund-data vendors ingest N-8B-2 accessions to extract sponsor, trustee, depositor, and evaluator identities and link filings to downstream prospectus and financial-statement records. They rely on the per-accession metadata file and on structured fields parseable from the filing text to build CIK-to-trust-series mappings and machine-readable feeds.
Researchers reconstructing long-running periodic payment plans (for estate work, dormant-account searches, or historical litigation) locate the original registration to identify the depositor, trustee, certificate form, and any refund or surrender rights. Supports tracing assignments, locating successor trustees, and producing evidentiary records.
Teams building retrieval-augmented systems for investment company regulation use the dataset as a bounded corpus covering an uncommon corner of the 40-Act landscape. The filings populate vector stores, train extraction models for UIT-specific entities (depositor, trustee, evaluator, principal underwriter), and benchmark models against vocabulary and item structures that differ from N-1A, N-2, and N-CSR.
The N-8B-2 audience is small but well defined: the 40-Act bar, UIT sponsors and their service providers, distribution-side compliance, regulators, specialist research desks, and reference-data and AI teams. Each group reads different items and exhibits, but all depend on the same primary record to support drafting, compliance, supervision, research, and data work that cannot be done reliably from secondary summaries.
The Form N-8B-2 Files Dataset supports a narrow set of operational workflows that depend on the trust-level §8(b) disclosure — depositor identity, trustee and custodian terms, indenture mechanics, sales-load schedules, evaluator and valuation procedures, periodic payment plan certificate terms, and the chronology of N-8B-2/A amendments.
40-Act counsel preparing a new N-8B-2 or a sponsor change pull peer filings keyed on formType and the depositor named in entities to harvest precedent language for the depositor-organization, trustee, distribution, redemption, and sales-load items. The trust indenture, underwriting agreement, and form of certificate attached as EX-* <DOCUMENT> blocks become the working template for the new exhibit set. Output: a draft registration statement, an amendment package, and a comment-letter response that mirrors accepted item structure.
Fund administrators and transfer agents onboarding a legacy trust read the original N-8B-2 together with every subsequent N-8B-2/A for the same CIK in filedAt order, since the dataset treats amendments as first-class records that scope only the items being changed. Walking the chronology resolves the current trustee, custodian, evaluator, sales-load schedule, and periodic-payment deduction terms actually in effect. Output: an authoritative trust profile that drives the administrator's procedure manual and the transfer agent's redemption and distribution workflows.
Trustee and custodian banks benchmarking a new mandate extract the trustee and custodian items — qualifications, compensation, replacement and removal terms — and the indenture exhibit from comparable trusts identified through the entities array. The fee schedules and liability provisions feed pricing, capital allocation, and fiduciary-risk acceptance decisions before signing. Output: a competitive bid and an internal risk-acceptance memo grounded in peer indenture clauses.
Compliance officers at firms distributing periodic payment plan certificates confirm the trust's registration status from formType and effectivenessDate, then pull the distribution-and-redemption item and the principal-underwriter description to document gross-versus-net investment mechanics, front-load deductions, surrender values, and refund rights. The filing and its exhibits are filed into the supervisory record alongside representative training materials. Output: documented suitability reviews and SRO-ready supervisory files tied to a specific accession.
Investment-management examiners and accountants reviewing a UIT pull every accession for a given cik and fileNo (811-series), verify that financial statements, evaluator designation, and required exhibits are present on the original N-8B-2, and audit the N-8B-2/A sequence for missing or stale updates to valuation tables, personnel, and affiliated-transaction disclosure. Output: comment letters, sweep-exam workpapers, and longitudinal disclosure findings.
Investigators tracing a decades-old periodic payment plan certificate locate the original N-8B-2 by sponsor or trust name, identify the depositor, trustee, certificate form, and any surrender or refund mechanics, and follow the N-8B-2/A trail to any successor trustee or assignment. Output: an evidentiary chain — citing accession numbers, filing dates, and exhibit filenames — usable in probate, dormant-asset claims, or litigation.
Data-vendor engineers and 40-Act corpus builders ingest each accession folder, parse metadata.json for filer identity and the documentFormatFiles manifest, and align entries one-to-one with the SGML <DOCUMENT> blocks via sequence, type, and filename to extract depositor, trustee, evaluator, and principal-underwriter names from the registration body. Output: a CIK-to-trust-to-party reference graph, a vector-store corpus for UIT-specific retrieval, and feeds that link each N-8B-2 to its companion S-6 prospectus and 24F-2 fee filing outside this dataset.
The Form N-8B-2 Files Dataset is distributed as monthly ZIP containers covering filings from January 1994 to present. Containers follow a YYYY/YYYY-MM.zip naming convention (for example, 2026/2026-04.zip) and each archive bundles the metadata file and all original EDGAR submission documents for every accession in that month, excluding image files.
Dataset Index JSON API: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-n8b2-files.json
Returns dataset-level metadata (name, description, last updated timestamp, earliest sample date, total records, total size, form types covered, container format, and content file types), the full dataset download URL, and the complete list of monthly container files with per-container size, record count, last updated timestamp, and download URL. Use this endpoint to monitor which containers were refreshed in the most recent run and decide which monthly archives to fetch incrementally. This endpoint does not require an API key.
Example response:
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{
2
"datasetId": "1f13365b-9ae0-69d7-94d3-cd576ee71ec9",
3
"datasetDownloadUrl": "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-n8b2-files.zip",
4
"name": "Form N-8B-2 Files Dataset",
5
"updatedAt": "2026-04-15T12:28:39.075Z",
6
"earliestSampleDate": "1994-01-01",
7
"totalRecords": 871,
8
"totalSize": 22479318,
9
"formTypes": ["N-8B-2", "N-8B-2/A"],
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"containerFormat": "ZIP",
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"fileTypes": ["TXT", "JSON", "HTML", "PDF"],
12
"containers": [
13
{
14
"downloadUrl": "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-n8b2-files/2026/2026-04.zip",
15
"key": "2026/2026-04.zip",
16
"size": 184213,
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"records": 3,
18
"updatedAt": "2026-04-15T12:28:39.075Z"
19
}
20
]
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}
Download Entire Dataset: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-n8b2-files.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY
Downloads the complete dataset as a single ZIP archive containing every monthly container from January 1994 to the latest refresh. This endpoint requires an API key.
Download Single Container: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-n8b2-files/2026/2026-04.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY
Downloads one monthly container ZIP, which is useful for incremental updates or for retrieving only a specific filing period without pulling the entire archive. This endpoint requires an API key.
The dataset covers Form N-8B-2 (the original Section 8(b) registration statement for unit investment trusts other than insurance company separate accounts) and Form N-8B-2/A (its amendment variant). Both form types appear as ordinary records, distinguished only by the /A suffix on the formType field.
One record is one EDGAR submission of Form N-8B-2 or N-8B-2/A, identified by a single accession number and materialized as a dedicated folder containing a metadata.json envelope plus the registrant's original documents — the primary registration statement and its exhibits — stored byte-for-byte as EDGAR disseminated them, with image binaries omitted.
A unit investment trust (UIT) other than a separate account must file N-8B-2 as its Section 8(b) registration statement within three months of its Section 8(a) notification on Form N-8A. The trust is the registrant, while the depositor (the sponsor that organizes the trust and deposits the underlying portfolio) prepares and signs the filing. Insurance company separate accounts are excluded — they register on Form N-4, N-6, or N-3 instead.
EDGAR coverage in this dataset begins in January 1994 and continues through the latest monthly refresh, tracking the phase-in of mandatory electronic filing. Pre-EDGAR paper N-8B-2 filings are not included.
The dataset is distributed as monthly ZIP containers under a YYYY/YYYY-MM.zip path scheme (for example, 2026/2026-04.zip). Each container bundles every accession folder filed in that month. File types inside the containers are TXT, JSON, HTML, and PDF; the primary registration-statement document is overwhelmingly .htm/.html in the modern era, with .txt in the earliest part of the archive and .pdf appearing sporadically.
Form N-8B-2 registers the UIT as an investment company under the Investment Company Act of 1940 (entity-level §8(b) registration); Form S-6 registers the units offered to investors under the Securities Act of 1933 and produces the prospectus delivered at sale. The same trust uses both filings, and S-6 incorporates substantial portions of the N-8B-2 by reference. Only N-8B-2 and N-8B-2/A populate this dataset; the corresponding S-6 prospectus is not included.
linkToXbrl, dataFiles, and seriesAndClassesContractsInformation are routinely empty for N-8B-2 records because the underlying form does not use XBRL structured data or the series/class/contract framework used by certain other fund forms. The emptiness reflects that these structured-payload slots do not apply to this form type, not missing data.