The Form N-8B-4 Files Dataset is an EDGAR-derived archive of registration statements filed by face-amount certificate (FAC) companies under the Investment Company Act of 1940, as prescribed by Rule 8b-4 (17 CFR 274.14). One record represents a single Form N-8B-4 or Form N-8B-4/A submission to EDGAR, identified by its accession number, and packages the EDGAR submission manifest together with the substantive registration document containing the registrant's answers to the 43 numbered disclosure items mandated by Rule 274.14. The filers are the FAC issuers themselves — a vanishing, near-extinct class of 1940 Act investment company defined in Section 4(1) of the Act and Section 2(a)(15) — registering under Section 8(b) or amending a prior registration. The dataset covers EDGAR filings from December 1997 forward, distributed as monthly ZIP containers with TXT, JSON, and HTML payloads.
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Form N-8B-4 is the registration statement prescribed by Rule 8b-4 (17 CFR 274.14) under the Investment Company Act of 1940 for face-amount certificate companies — a narrow, legacy class of investment company that issues face-amount certificates obligating it to pay a stated sum at a future date in exchange for installment or lump-sum payments. The form requires the registrant to disclose, in extensive narrative form, the company's organization and history, controlling persons, fundamental investment and borrowing policies, the face-amount certificates and other securities issued, principal underwriters and depositaries, the investment adviser, the identity and compensation of directors and officers, affiliated persons transactions, pending litigation, and audited financial statements. The /A variant is an amendment to a previously filed N-8B-4, used to correct, supplement, or update a prior submission.
The dataset is delivered as monthly ZIP containers organized under year-level directories (for example 2021/2021-12.zip); inside each container every accession is materialized as its own folder named with the dashless accession number (for example 000189515521000006/). That accession folder is the unit of the dataset. It holds a metadata.json manifest describing the submission as a whole plus the primary documents from the original EDGAR submission, with image binaries stripped out. For most N-8B-4 accessions the folder carries two artifacts — the JSON manifest and a single SGML-wrapped plain-text registration document — but accessions that include exhibits will carry one or more additional TXT or HTML files alongside the primary registration. The dataset's earliest sample is dated December 1997, aligning with EDGAR's late-1990s phase-in of investment company filings.
An amendment carries the identical 43-item internal structure as the base form: it is not a delta document but a re-filing that may restate any subset of the items the registrant chooses to update, and it is linked to its predecessor by the registrant's CIK and Investment Company Act file number (811- series) rather than by any explicit parent-accession field. Structurally an N-8B-4/A record is indistinguishable from a base-filing record except for the formType value in metadata.json.
Each accession folder stacks two layers:
metadata.json — fully structured JSON describing the filing at the accession level: who filed, when, under what file number, with what list of attached documents, and with canonical EDGAR retrieval URLs..txt and any companion exhibit files — carrying the substantive disclosure: the registrant's answers to the 43 numbered items prescribed by 17 CFR 274.14, followed by the SIGNATURES block.The manifest is machine-structured; the body is semi-structured narrative inside an SGML envelope. The dataset preserves the body as filed and does not flatten it into structured fields.
metadata.json manifestThe manifest sits at the root of each accession folder and exposes a stable set of top-level fields:
formType — the literal EDGAR form code, either N-8B-4 or N-8B-4/A.accessionNo — the dashed accession number that uniquely identifies the submission across EDGAR.filedAt — an ISO 8601 timestamp with timezone offset capturing the filing receipt time.effectivenessDate — the date the registration becomes effective, formatted YYYY-MM-DD.description — the human-readable form description (for example, "Form N-8B-4 - Registration statement for face-amount certificate companies").linkToFilingDetails — URL to the principal document on EDGAR.linkToTxt — URL to the complete-submission .txt archive (the aggregated SGML envelope EDGAR serves as <accession>.txt).linkToHtml — URL to the EDGAR filing index page.linkToXbrl — URL to XBRL data when present; for N-8B-4 this is conventionally empty.documentFormatFiles[] — an array of every document attached to the submission, each entry carrying sequence, size, documentUrl, type, and an optional description. The array also includes a synthetic entry for the complete-submission .txt whose sequence and type are a single space character; that entry points at linkToTxt rather than at a file inside the accession folder.dataFiles[] — typically empty for N-8B-4, which carries no structured data exhibits.seriesAndClassesContractsInformation[] — populated only when the registrant reports series/class identifiers; commonly empty.entities[] — one or more filer/registrant entity blocks, each carrying cik, companyName (with the entity role appended as a parenthetical suffix such as (Filer)), type (the form code), act (the act code as a string — 40 for the Investment Company Act of 1940), fileNo (the EDGAR Investment Company file number, conventionally in the 811- series), irsNo, sic (SIC code paired with its industry description), stateOfIncorporation, fiscalYearEnd (a four-character MMDD string), and filmNo.id — an opaque 32-character hex record identifier, distinct from the accession number.documentFormatFiles[] is the authoritative index for navigating the folder: it tells a consumer which sibling files in the folder belong to the submission and what role each plays.
The substantive content lives in the primary .txt document, named in the registrant's house style (for example pacein8b4.txt) and embedded inside the standard EDGAR SGML document envelope. At the outermost level the complete submission served by EDGAR is bracketed by <SEC-DOCUMENT> and a header block (<SEC-HEADER>) carrying ACCESSION-NUMBER, CONFORMED-SUBMISSION-TYPE, FILED-AS-OF-DATE, and the FILER block. Within that envelope each attached document is wrapped in its own <DOCUMENT> block:
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<DOCUMENT>
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<TYPE>N-8B-4
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<SEQUENCE>1
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<FILENAME>pacein8b4.txt
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<TEXT>
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... numbered item answers ...
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SIGNATURES
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... signing block ...
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</TEXT>
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</DOCUMENT>
Inside <TEXT> the disclosure is rendered as ASCII prose with whitespace-aligned tables, monospaced columns, and section headings rather than HTML markup; the form predates the modern HTML/iXBRL EDGAR conventions and EDGAR treats the body as a flat text payload. Some filers occasionally embed inner HTML inside <TEXT> for typographic control, but the canonical and dominant presentation is plain text. Exhibits and financial statements, when filed as separate documents, appear as additional <DOCUMENT> blocks at the same level as the primary registration and surface as separate entries in documentFormatFiles[] and as separate sibling files in the accession folder.
The body of the form is organized as a fixed sequence of 43 numbered disclosure items prescribed by 17 CFR 274.14. The items are not split into Roman-numeral "Parts" the way 10-K and 10-Q are; they are grouped by subject and ordered roughly from organizational identity through investment policy, securities, distribution, management, and finally financials. Each item is rendered as a numeric heading (1., 2., … 43.) followed by the prescribed prompt and the registrant's free-form answer. Items the registrant deems inapplicable are answered with n/a or "Not applicable" and a brief justification. The substantive coverage runs as follows:
The Item 43 financial statements and exhibits may be embedded directly in the primary document's <TEXT> body or carried as separate <DOCUMENT> blocks inside the same submission. When carried separately, each is exposed as its own entry in documentFormatFiles[] and as a sibling file in the accession folder.
The <TEXT> body terminates with a SIGNATURES block — a fixed closing element that names the registrant, attests to the truth of the registration's contents, identifies the city and state where executed, gives the date of execution, and is signed by the principal officer or officers required by the form's instructions. The block frequently references the corporate seal and may include attestation by a secretary or assistant secretary. It is rendered as plain text rather than as an image of a wet signature.
For each accession the dataset preserves:
TXT or HTML form.The file types found in the dataset are TXT, JSON, and HTML. The primary registration body is almost always plain ASCII inside the SGML wrapper.
Image files attached to the original EDGAR submission (logos, scanned signature pages, GIF or JPG renderings of certificate specimens) are excluded from the accession folder; the dataset is text-and-metadata only. The linkToTxt URL in metadata.json resolves to EDGAR's complete-submission archive on edgar.sec.gov, which is referenced from documentFormatFiles[] but not materialized inside the accession folder. Form N-8B-4 has never been swept into the Commission's structured-data tagging program — the form predates XBRL adoption and the rule retains its narrative-text design — so structured-data exhibits are absent by design.
Form N-8B-4's item schema has been remarkably stable: the 43-item structure mandated by 17 CFR 274.14 has remained essentially intact across the EDGAR era covered by this dataset (filings dating back to December 1997). The form was drafted for a specific, narrow Investment Company Act registrant class and has not been subject to the periodic disclosure-modernization rounds that have repeatedly reshaped 10-K, 10-Q, 8-K, and proxy disclosure. Substantive changes across filings reflect the small population's evolution — fewer active filers, narrower product lines — rather than rule-driven additions of new items. Likewise the on-disk presentation has remained SGML-wrapped plain text throughout, with occasional inner-HTML usage by individual filers but no migration to HTML or inline XBRL of the kind that reshaped operating-company forms.
Several characteristics matter when working with these records:
.txt body or carried as separate sibling documents; consult documentFormatFiles[] to determine which is the case for a given accession.companyName (for example (Filer)) is encoded in the name string itself rather than in a dedicated role field, and must be parsed off the name when normalizing entities.N-8B-4/A) reuse the base form's anatomy and must be associated with their predecessor by registrant CIK and the 811- Investment Company Act file number; there is no explicit parent-accession reference inside the manifest.The filer is a face-amount certificate company registering itself as an investment company with the SEC, or amending a prior registration. The registrant is the certificate-issuing entity acting in its own capacity under the 1940 Act. No third party signs on the registrant's behalf; the investment adviser, depositary, controlling persons, and principal underwriter are described inside the form but are not the filing party.
Face-amount certificate companies are one of the three statutory classes of investment company defined in Section 4 of the 1940 Act:
Section 2(a)(15) defines a "face-amount certificate" and the "face-amount certificate of the installment type" — a certificate, investment contract, or other security obligating the issuer to pay a stated or determinable sum at a fixed future date more than twenty-four months after issuance, in consideration of periodic installment payments by the holder. A "fully-paid" face-amount certificate is the lump-sum analog.
This is a vanishing filer population. The face-amount certificate industry contracted sharply after the 1940 Act imposed strict reserve and qualifying-asset requirements (Section 28). Only a handful of legacy issuers remain, which is why the dataset spans roughly three decades of EDGAR with very few records.
Form N-8B-4 is event-driven, not periodic. There is no annual, quarterly, or calendar cadence — a record appears only when a registration event occurs.
Form N-8B-4 (initial) is triggered by registration as an investment company under Section 8 of the 1940 Act:
The original filing is a one-time event tied to the company's entry into the registered investment company population. After registration, ongoing disclosure flows through the periodic and current reporting framework applicable to registered investment companies, not through repeat N-8B-4 filings.
Form N-8B-4/A (amendment) is triggered when material information in a previously filed Form N-8B-4 must be corrected, supplemented, or updated. Typical amendment triggers:
The amendment is filed by the same registrant through the same EDGAR pathway; only the form type designator changes.
Form N-8B-4 has been accepted on EDGAR since the late-1990s phase-in of investment company filings. The earliest record in this dataset is dated December 1997. Pre-EDGAR paper filings exist back to the original effectiveness of the 1940 Act but sit outside this EDGAR-derived dataset.
Form N-8B-4 occupies a narrow corner of the Investment Company Act registration regime: it is the Section 8(b)(1) registration statement prescribed by 17 CFR 274.14 for face-amount certificate (FAC) companies. The most informative comparisons are the other N-8B-family form, the registration statements used by adjacent 1940 Act registrant subtypes, the 1933 Act offering forms that FAC issuers file in parallel, and the post-registration reporting forms (N-CEN, N-PORT, N-CSR).
The closest sibling. Same statutory hook (Section 8(b)), same legacy item-driven disclosure architecture, but a different registrant type: currently-issuing UITs rather than FAC companies. Content emphasis diverges accordingly — Form N-8B-2 documents trust structure, sponsor/depositor relationships, and the deposited portfolio; N-8B-4 documents the FAC issuer's organization, certificate terms, qualified investments and reserves, and issuer-level financials. N-8B-2 remains an active filing pathway; N-8B-4 covers a near-extinct registrant population.
Shares only the 1940 Act registration purpose. Form N-1A is a dual 1933/1940 Act form structured as Part A prospectus, Part B SAI, and Part C exhibits, designed for retail distribution and continuous post-effective amendment. N-8B-4 is a pure 1940 Act filing that follows the flat 43-item Rule 274.14 schedule (organization, investment policy, capital structure, management compensation, audited financials). FAC issuers that publicly offer certificates file a separate 1933 Act registration; N-1A registrants do not.
Also a dual 1933/1940 Act prospectus-style form. The boundary is registrant subtype: closed-end funds and BDCs issue equity interests in a managed portfolio, while FAC companies issue contractual certificates with a stated face amount payable at maturity. No structural or population overlap with Form N-2 — i.e., N-2 — in N-8B-4 in practice.
Register insurance company separate accounts funding variable annuity and variable life contracts. They surface as comparators only because variable contracts and face-amount certificates can both appear to be long-dated contractual products. Legally distinct: Forms N-3, N-4, N-6 — i.e., N-3/N-4/N-6 — disclosure centers on contract features, mortality and expense charges, and underlying fund options within a separate-account architecture. N-8B-4 has no separate account, no insurance overlay, and no variable investment options.
Complementary, not substitute. The 1940 Act registration of the FAC issuer on N-8B-4 does not register the certificates themselves for public offering; FAC issuers therefore file Forms S-1 and S-3 (S-1 or S-3 if eligible) in parallel for the offering-level prospectus and 1933 Act disclosure. Neither filing contains the other's substance: S-1/S-3 lacks the Rule 274.14 item schedule, and N-8B-4 lacks the 1933 Act offering prospectus. A full FAC issuer view typically requires both.
Diverge from N-8B-4 on filing trigger and content format. Form N-CEN (annual census) and Form N-PORT (monthly portfolio holdings) are recurring post-registration reports filed as structured XML/XBRL with discrete tagged data points. N-8B-4 is a one-time initial registration statement (with /A amendments), filed primarily as narrative text with financial-statement exhibits. The two layers do not overlap in content: N-CEN/N-PORT carry no foundational organizational or capital-structure disclosure, and N-8B-4 carries no ongoing operational data.
Periodic semi-annual and annual report shareholder reports with certified financial statements and MD&A-style discussion. Overlaps with N-8B-4 only at the audited-financials axis. Form N-CSR — i.e., N-CSR — is a standardized post-registration shareholder communication; N-8B-4 is the original issuer-level registration document organized by the Rule 274.14 item list.
The dataset is defined by the conjunction of four narrow attributes:
No adjacent form substitutes. N-8B-2 covers the same statutory section for a different registrant type. N-1A, N-2, and N-3/N-4/N-6 cover other 1940 Act registrant subtypes using fundamentally different document architectures. S-1/S-3 register the certificates themselves under the 1933 Act in parallel. N-CEN, N-PORT, and N-CSR populate the ongoing reporting layer that follows registration. The corpus is best understood as a near-complete legacy archive of an almost-extinct 1940 Act registrant category, not a continuously growing filing stream.
Face-amount certificate companies are a near-extinct category of registered investment company, and the audience for the Form N-8B-4 Files Dataset is small but specific. Each group reads a different slice of the 43-item schedule covering organization, controlling persons, investment policies, securities issued, advisers and depositaries, management compensation, and audited financials.
Counsel advising the few surviving FAC registrants, or evaluating whether a new product should be structured as an FAC at all, use the filings as a precedent library. They concentrate on the organization and incorporation items, fundamental investment and borrowing policies, the description of installment and fully paid certificates, and disclosure of relationships with advisers, principal underwriters, and depositaries. Output: registration drafts, exemptive requests, Section 28 qualified-investment memos, and disclosure benchmarks against the full N-8B-4 universe.
Staff at regulators, think tanks, and policy shops studying marginal Investment Company Act forms use the dataset to map the FAC population and track how disclosure practice has evolved. They focus on controlling-persons items, investment policy schedules, and audited financials showing reserves behind outstanding certificates. Output: regulatory studies, rulemaking comment files, and working papers on Section 28 reserve and qualified-investment compliance.
Teams building products that claim full coverage of every Investment Company Act form treat N-8B-4 as a long-tail completeness requirement. They use the filings to populate form-type taxonomies, validate parsers against the 43-item schedule, and confirm that filer search, alerting, and registration-tracking pipelines do not silently drop FAC registrants. Output: ingestion pipelines, form-coverage matrices, search indexes, and QA fixtures.
Historians documenting the decline of the face-amount certificate industry use the dataset as primary source material. They read incorporation dates, corporate genealogy in the controlling-persons items, certificate product descriptions, and historical financial statements showing the contraction of the certificate book. Output: scholarly articles, archival timelines, and reference material on twentieth-century retail savings products.
When an FAC business has been acquired, restructured, or wound down inside a larger financial group, compliance staff at the successor reconstruct the regulatory lineage of the acquired business. They focus on parent-subsidiary control items, adviser and depositary identities, outstanding certificate liabilities, and the policies under which certificates were issued. Output: internal lineage memos, regulatory-inheritance schedules, and reference files supporting residual obligations to certificate holders.
In disputes involving certificate holder claims, reserve adequacy, or alleged misrepresentation of investment policy, litigation support teams and forensic accountants pull N-8B-4 filings to establish what was disclosed and when. They concentrate on audited financials, the qualified investments backing certificate liabilities, investment policy items, and management compensation and affiliated-transaction disclosures. Output: exhibit binders, expert reports, and damages models built on contemporaneous registration disclosure.
Treatise authors and CLE course developers covering the full Investment Company Act framework use the dataset to source authentic examples of FAC registration disclosure. They focus on structural items, investment policy schedules, and affiliated-persons disclosures, often comparing them to analogous items on Forms N-1A, N-2, and N-8B-2. Output: treatise chapters, casebook excerpts, CLE materials, and comparative tables across the full registration taxonomy.
This is a completeness asset, not a general research feed. Lawyers draft and benchmark disclosure for the few remaining FAC registrants; regulatory researchers and historians study a vanishing form; engineers use it to guarantee exhaustive coverage; successor-entity compliance teams trace lineage; forensic analysts build litigation records; and educators teach the full Investment Company Act map. The value lies in the fact that the filings are hard to find, structurally unusual, and indispensable when the work requires the complete registration taxonomy.
The use cases below are tied to the 43-item Rule 274.14 schedule that defines every record in the Form N-8B-4 Files Dataset.
Counsel preparing an N-8B-4 or N-8B-4/A for a surviving or successor FAC issuer benchmarks each numbered item against every prior filing in the dataset. Items 1–4 (organization and control), Items 7–14 (fundamental investment and borrowing policies), Item 15 (face-amount certificate series), Item 29 (investment adviser), Items 31–32 (depositaries), and Item 43 (audited financials and exhibits) are pulled across accessions to produce a precedent comparison. Output: a clause-by-clause drafting template and a redline showing where the new registrant's disclosure deviates from the historical norm.
When an FAC business has been acquired, reorganized, or wound down, compliance staff reconstruct its registration history by stitching together the base N-8B-4 and every N-8B-4/A linked through the registrant's CIK and 811- Investment Company Act file number in metadata.json. Item 1 (organization and reorganizations), Item 3 (controlling persons), Item 15 (outstanding certificate series), and Item 29 (advisory arrangements) drive the lineage trace. Output: a regulatory-inheritance memo and a residual-obligation schedule for outstanding certificate holders.
Engineering teams that advertise full Investment Company Act form coverage use the corpus as a long-tail completeness fixture. The formType values N-8B-4 and N-8B-4/A, the 43-item body anchors, and the SGML-wrapped plain-text payload are used to validate parsers, EDGAR ingestion pipelines, form-type taxonomies, and filer-alerting rules so that FAC registrants are not silently dropped. Output: parser test fixtures, a form-coverage QA matrix, and regression cases for SGML-only (non-XBRL, non-HTML) submissions.
Regulatory researchers and FAC counsel extract the qualified-investment and reserve disclosures that back outstanding certificates by reading Items 7–14 (fundamental policies, including concentration, real estate, and borrowing), Item 24 (state deposits), Item 33 (insurance of certificate holders), and the Item 43 audited balance sheets. Output: a normalized table of qualified-investment composition and reserve coverage across the FAC population, supporting Section 28 compliance memos and rulemaking comment files.
In disputes over reserve adequacy, certificate-holder recoveries, or alleged misstatement of investment policy, litigation support teams pull the contemporaneous N-8B-4 or N-8B-4/A on file at the relevant date. Item 15 (certificate series and amounts outstanding), Items 20–23 (sales, statistical, and payment history), Item 36 (officer and director compensation), Item 41 (affiliated-person transactions), Item 42 (pending legal proceedings), and the Item 43 audited financials are the core exhibits. Output: dated exhibit binders, expert-witness disclosure timelines, and damages models grounded in the registration as filed.
Financial historians and securities-regulation scholars treat the corpus as a near-complete archive of a vanishing 1940 Act registrant category. They read incorporation dates and reorganization narratives in Item 1, controlling-persons chains in Item 3, certificate product descriptions in Item 15, and the historical Item 43 financial statements showing the contraction of the certificate book. Output: scholarly articles, archival timelines of the FAC industry, and comparative tables aligning N-8B-4 disclosure against the parallel N-8B-2, N-1A, and N-2 frameworks.
The Form N-8B-4 Files Dataset is accessible through three complementary endpoints. Authentication uses your SEC API key, passed as the token query parameter on download endpoints. Containers are distributed in ZIP format and bundle the original EDGAR submission documents (TXT, JSON, HTML) alongside a metadata file per accession number. Because the entire dataset is small, most users will simply pull the full archive in a single request.
Dataset Index JSON API: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-n8b4-files.json
This endpoint returns dataset metadata along with the list of container files, including each container's key, size, record count, updated timestamp, and download URL. Use it to discover available containers and to monitor which containers have changed in the most recent refresh run, so you can fetch only the updated ones on a daily basis. This endpoint does not require an API key.
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{
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"datasetId": "1f13365b-9ae0-6a6f-a686-b9a75167be68",
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"datasetDownloadUrl": "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-n8b4-files.zip",
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"name": "Form N-8B-4 Files Dataset",
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"updatedAt": "2026-04-16T08:53:22.598Z",
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"earliestSampleDate": "1997-12-01",
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"totalRecords": 9,
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"totalSize": 93293,
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"formTypes": ["N-8B-4", "N-8B-4/A"],
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"containerFormat": "ZIP",
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"fileTypes": ["TXT", "JSON", "HTML"],
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"containers": [
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{
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"downloadUrl": "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-n8b4-files/2026/2026-03.zip",
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"key": "2026/2026-03.zip",
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"size": 13818,
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"records": 1,
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"updatedAt": "2026-04-16T08:53:22.598Z"
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}
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]
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}
Download Entire Dataset: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-n8b4-files.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY
Downloads the full dataset as a single ZIP archive containing every container from December 1997 to present. Given the dataset's small footprint, this is the recommended access method for most workflows. This endpoint requires an API key.
Download Single Container: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-n8b4-files/2026/2026-03.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY
Downloads one individual container file using the key returned by the index API. Use this when you only need filings from a specific period or want to pull recently updated containers incrementally. This endpoint requires an API key.
The dataset covers Form N-8B-4 and its amendment variant Form N-8B-4/A — the registration statement prescribed by Rule 8b-4 (17 CFR 274.14) under the Investment Company Act of 1940 for face-amount certificate (FAC) companies. The /A variant is a re-filing of the base form used to correct, supplement, or update a prior registration; it carries the identical 43-item internal structure as the base.
One record is a single Form N-8B-4 or Form N-8B-4/A submission to EDGAR, identified by its accession number and stored as a folder named with the dashless accession number. The folder contains a metadata.json manifest plus the primary SGML-wrapped registration document and any exhibits filed alongside it.
Face-amount certificate companies — one of the three statutory classes of investment company defined in Section 4(1) of the 1940 Act — file the form to register themselves as investment companies under Section 8(b). The registrant is the certificate-issuing entity itself; the investment adviser, depositary, controlling persons, and principal underwriter are described inside the form but are not the filing party.
The form is event-driven, not periodic. A new record only appears when a face-amount certificate company files an initial registration or files an amendment to a prior registration. Because the FAC industry has shrunk to a few legacy issuers, new accessions are infrequent.
The earliest record is dated December 1997, aligning with EDGAR's late-1990s phase-in of investment company filings, and the dataset extends to the present. Pre-EDGAR paper filings dating back to the original effectiveness of the 1940 Act exist but sit outside this EDGAR-derived dataset.
The dataset is distributed as monthly ZIP containers organized under year-level directories (for example 2021/2021-12.zip). Inside each container, every accession is materialized as a folder containing a metadata.json manifest and the primary registration document plus any exhibits, with file types of TXT, JSON, and HTML. Image binaries from the original EDGAR submissions are excluded.
Both forms share the same statutory hook (Section 8(b)) and the same legacy item-driven disclosure architecture, but they cover different registrant types: N-8B-2 registers unit investment trusts under 17 CFR 274.12, while N-8B-4 registers face-amount certificate companies under 17 CFR 274.14. N-8B-2 remains an active filing pathway for currently-issuing UITs; N-8B-4 covers a near-extinct registrant population.