Form POS EX Files Dataset

The Form POS EX Files Dataset is a per-filing corpus of every Form POS EX submission accepted by EDGAR — post-effective amendments filed under Rule 462(d) of the Securities Act of 1933 solely to add or refresh exhibits on an already-effective registration statement. Each record corresponds to a single accession number and packages the original primary and exhibit documents the registrant submitted, together with a structured metadata.json describing the filing. The dataset is filed by the same Securities Act registrants whose registration statements are being amended — most frequently registered investment companies, BDCs, insurance separate-account trusts, and operating-company shelf issuers — and becomes effective on filing because Rule 462(d) provides immediate effectiveness. Coverage starts in September 1997, the post-EDGAR-mandate electronic period, and is delivered as one ZIP per calendar month.

Dataset APIs

Dataset Files

What This Dataset Contains

The dataset contains every Form POS EX submission accepted by EDGAR. Form POS EX is a post-effective amendment to a Securities Act of 1933 registration statement filed under Rule 462(d), and its narrow function is to add exhibits — or replace previously filed exhibits — without altering the substantive terms of the offering or the prospectus disclosure. Because Rule 462(d) provides for immediate effectiveness, a POS EX becomes effective the moment EDGAR accepts it; the dataset's effectivenessDate field consistently equals the calendar-day portion of filedAt, and the two should not be treated as independent observations.

The form is dominated, both historically and today, by registered investment companies (open-end funds and closed-end funds, business development companies, variable insurance product trusts) and by issuers of insurance contracts registered on Forms N-4/N-6 and similar series-and-class structures. The typical exhibit set therefore leans toward fund-governance and fund-distribution documents — opinions of counsel, auditor consents, distribution-agreement schedules, transfer-agent and shareholder-services agreement schedules, custodian agreements, and powers of attorney — rather than the operating-company exhibit set common to S-1/S-3 amendments.

The dataset is delivered as one ZIP per calendar month, named YYYY-MM.zip and organized under a YYYY/ prefix on the SEC-API datasets endpoint. Coverage starts in September 1997 (the post-EDGAR-mandate electronic period; pre-EDGAR paper amendments under Rule 462(d) served the same exhibit-addition function but are not in this electronic dataset) and continues to the present. The file types found in the dataset are TXT, JSON, HTML, and PDF, although in practice modern POS EX records consist almost exclusively of metadata.json plus a handful of .htm documents; PDF and plain-text submissions appear primarily in older filings.

Content Structure of a Single Record

What one record represents

One record in the Form POS EX Files Dataset corresponds to a single Form POS EX submission accepted by EDGAR — that is, one accession number filed under the form type POS EX. The dataset materializes that record as a folder named after the 18-digit, dash-stripped accession number (for example, 000119312525163151 for accession 0001193125-25-163151). Inside that folder sit the original EDGAR primary and exhibit documents that made up the submission, together with a single metadata.json describing the filing.

The folder is the indivisible unit of the dataset: one folder, one accession, one post-effective amendment whose sole regulatory purpose was to add or refresh exhibits attached to a previously effective Securities Act registration statement. Each record therefore carries both the structured filing-level metadata (form type, accession number, filer entities, file numbers, effectiveness date, links) and the full text of every primary and exhibit document the registrant submitted, with the deliberate exception of image attachments.

Logical layers of a POS EX submission

A POS EX submission, opened on EDGAR, contains three logical layers:

1. Facing page of the registration statement — identifying the registrant, the registration statement file number being amended (a 333- or 033- series file number), the Securities Act registration provisions invoked, and the Rule 462(d) basis for immediate effectiveness.
2. Explanatory note — stating that the amendment is being filed solely to add or refresh specified exhibits and incorporating the prospectus and the substantive parts of the prior registration statement by reference.
3. Signature page and exhibits — the registrant's signature block (commonly executed for the trustees or directors via a power of attorney filed as an EX-99 exhibit) followed by the exhibits themselves, each delivered as a separate document and listed in the registration statement's standard exhibit index.

Container and per-record file layout

Extracting one monthly ZIP produces a single top-level directory YYYY-MM/, and inside that directory there is exactly one sub-folder per filing, named after the no-dash accession number. All documents belonging to a filing are flat files directly inside the accession folder — there is no further nesting.

Per-record file counts vary substantially with exhibit volume. The minimum shape is two files — a single primary POS EX document plus metadata.json — for amendments that add only one exhibit (for instance a stand-alone consent of counsel). Multi-exhibit fund amendments commonly run to roughly ten files, with the primary POS EX document accompanied by a ladder of EX-99 schedules. There is no fixed expected exhibit list; heterogeneity across filers is the norm.

Filename conventions inside a folder follow EDGAR's submitted-as-is rule. Document filenames are preserved exactly as the filer uploaded them, ranging from generic (main.htm, cst_pos-ex.htm) to filing-agent templated (e.g. Donnelley-style d71314dposex.htm, d71314dex99b.htm) to description-rich (pos-ex_no.37_june_2025_n.htm, consentofaltusgroup-posex6.htm). The accession folder is the only piece of the path with a strict naming scheme; document filenames must be looked up via metadata.documentFormatFiles rather than parsed by convention.

The metadata.json object

Every accession folder contains exactly one metadata.json (it is never missing). Its top-level fields are:

• formType — always "POS EX" for this dataset.
• accessionNo — EDGAR accession number in dashed form (e.g. 0001193125-25-163151).
• effectivenessDate — the date the post-effective amendment becomes effective (YYYY-MM-DD); equal to the filing date because of Rule 462(d).
• filedAt — ISO-8601 timestamp of acceptance with EDGAR's Eastern-time offset (e.g. 2025-07-23T10:38:45-04:00).
• description — fixed human-readable form description: "Form POS EX - Post-effective amendment adding exhibits to registration statement [Rule 462(d)]".
• linkToFilingDetails — URL of the primary POS EX document on SEC.gov.
• linkToTxt — URL of the complete-submission .txt bundle (the bundle itself is not packaged into the ZIP).
• linkToHtml — URL of the EDGAR filing index page (the index page is not packaged into the ZIP).
• linkToXbrl — URL of the inline-XBRL viewer when applicable; consistently empty in practice, even when XBRL artifacts exist. Use dataFiles rather than this field to detect XBRL.
• id — internal 32-hex document identifier.
• documentFormatFiles — array describing every primary document in the original SGML submission.
• dataFiles — array of XBRL-side artifacts (taxonomy schema, label and presentation linkbases, instance XML); often empty for POS EX.
• entities — array of filer / co-filer / subject entities (one or more rows per filing).
• seriesAndClassesContractsInformation — array describing fund series and class-contract identifiers; populated for fund filings that carry series/class metadata, empty otherwise.

documentFormatFiles[*]

Each element describes one file from the SGML submission:

• sequence — the document's numeric position in the SGML envelope ("1" is the primary POS EX document, then "2", "3", … for exhibits). The trailing complete-submission .txt bundle is signalled by sequence: " " (a single space).
• size — file size in bytes, as a string.
• documentUrl — full URL on SEC.gov; for inline-XBRL filings the primary document URL is wrapped in EDGAR's /ix?doc= viewer prefix.
• type — EDGAR document type code: POS EX for the primary, then exhibit codes such as EX-23.1 (auditor consent), EX-99.(B) (by-laws), EX-99.(A)(1)(II), EX-99.J OTHER OPININ, EX-12, EX-16, or GRAPHIC for image attachments.
• description — optional human-readable description of the document.

dataFiles[*]

Same shape as documentFormatFiles[*], used for XBRL ancillaries: EX-101.SCH (taxonomy schema), EX-101.LAB (label linkbase), EX-101.PRE (presentation linkbase), and the extracted inline-XBRL XML instance. These are referenced from the metadata but not written into the ZIP itself.

entities[*]

One entry per filer, co-filer, or named subject on the filing:

• companyName — entity name with role suffix, e.g. "COLUMBIA FUNDS VARIABLE SERIES TRUST (Filer)".
• cik — Central Index Key as a digit string.
• type — entity-level filing role (typically "POS EX").
• act — Securities Act under which the registration was filed ("33" for the 1933 Act).
• fileNo — SEC file number being amended, e.g. "333-191495" for post-1992 series or "033-83548" for pre-1992 series.
• filmNo — EDGAR film number assigned at acceptance.
• irsNo — IRS Employer Identification Number; "000000000" when not disclosed.
• fiscalYearEnd — MMDD form (e.g. "1231").
• stateOfIncorporation — two-letter state or territory code, occasionally absent.
• sic — Standard Industrial Classification code with description, when present.
• tickers — array of ticker symbols on the entity, present only for entities EDGAR has tagged with tickers (e.g. ["PSEC", "PBY", "PSEC.PA", ...]).

The schema supports multiple entities per accession; many fund POS EX submissions are filed by a single trust, but co-filings (for example, a depositor with one or more separate accounts, or a trust with its dependent registrants) yield multiple entity rows.

Document files inside a record

Each .htm document inside an accession folder is wrapped in EDGAR's SGML document envelope. The leading lines of every file look like:

          1
          <DOCUMENT>
        

          2
          <TYPE>EX-99.J OTHER OPININ
        

          3
          <SEQUENCE>2
        

          4
          <FILENAME>reyndersconsent.htm
        

          5
          <TEXT>
        

          6
          <HTML>
        

          7
          <HEAD>
        

          8
          <TITLE></TITLE>
        

          9
          </HEAD>
        

          10
          <BODY>
        

          11
          ... (full HTML content of the exhibit) ...
        

          12
          </BODY>
        

          13
          </HTML>
        

          14
          </TEXT>
        

          15
          </DOCUMENT>
        

The <DOCUMENT>, <TYPE>, <SEQUENCE>, <FILENAME>, and optional <DESCRIPTION> lines are not standard HTML; they are EDGAR submission-header tags preserved verbatim at the top of each document file. Strict HTML parsers should strip the wrapper before processing the inner body.

The structural roles inside a record are:

1. Primary POS EX document (type: POS EX, sequence: "1") — the facing page, the explanatory note describing the purpose of the amendment, the exhibit-index entry block (often expressed as a brief amendment to Item 28 of Form N-1A or its analogue under "Other Exhibits"), and the signature page bearing the registrant, principal officer, principal financial officer, and a majority of the trustees or directors.

2. Exhibit documents — one .htm per exhibit, each carrying its own EDGAR TYPE code. Two exhibit-code vocabularies coexist in the dataset:

   • Investment-company exhibits (lettered EX-99 sub-paragraph codes from the relevant N-form exhibit table):
     • EX-99.(A) charter / declaration-of-trust amendments and EX-99.(B) by-laws.
     • EX-99.(D) investment-advisory agreements and amendments.
     • EX-99.(E) underwriting / distribution agreements and schedules of underlying funds.
     • EX-99.(G) custodian agreements.
     • EX-99.(H) other material contracts, including transfer-agent and shareholder-services agreements and their schedules.
     • EX-99.(I) opinions of counsel as to legality.
     • EX-99.J OTHER OPININ consents of independent registered public accounting firms and other experts (the truncation is the EDGAR-coded form of "Other Opinions/Consents").
     • EX-99.(K) other opinions, financial-statement schedules, and consents.
     • EX-99.(M) and EX-99.(N) Rule 12b-1 distribution and Rule 18f-3 multi-class plans.
     • EX-99.(P) codes of ethics.
     • EX-99.(Q) powers of attorney.
   • Operating-company exhibits (Regulation S-K Item 601 numeric codes): EX-3 charter and by-laws, EX-4 instruments defining rights of security holders, EX-5 legal opinion as to legality, EX-10 material contracts, EX-12 computation of ratios, EX-16 letter regarding change in certifying accountant, EX-23 consent of experts and counsel, EX-24 powers of attorney, EX-99 additional exhibits.

3. Complete-submission .txt bundle reference — appears as a trailing entry in documentFormatFiles with a single-space sequence. The bundle itself is not included in the ZIP; only its metadata reference is preserved.

Exhibits are typically narrative-legal in form (counsel opinions and consents on letterhead) or contractual (agreements, schedules, plans). They are not financial-statement documents — POS EX does not amend the financial statements of the registration statement. Tabular content, when present, generally appears in distribution-agreement and shareholder-services-agreement schedules listing covered series, classes, fees, and effective dates.

Included content

For every POS EX accession from September 1997 to the present, the dataset record includes:

• The full metadata.json object described above.
• The primary POS EX document (facing page, explanatory note, signature page), preserved with its EDGAR SGML envelope and its original filename.
• All exhibit documents submitted under the form, each preserved as a separate .htm (or, for older filings, .txt/.pdf) file with its SGML envelope and original filename, regardless of exhibit count.

Excluded or separate content

Several pieces of the original EDGAR submission are deliberately not packaged into the ZIP, even when they appear in metadata references:

• Image files (GRAPHIC documents — .jpg, .gif logos, signature scans, fund-marketing artwork) are intentionally omitted from each record. metadata.documentFormatFiles may still contain entries with type: GRAPHIC, so any join between the metadata array and the on-disk files must tolerate dangling references.
• The complete-submission .txt bundle (<accession>.txt referenced by linkToTxt) is not included; only the per-document files are written.
• The EDGAR index page (<accession>-index.htm referenced by linkToHtml) is not included.
• XBRL companion files (EX-101.SCH, EX-101.LAB, EX-101.PRE, extracted instance XML) referenced under metadata.dataFiles are not packaged into the ZIP. For inline-XBRL filings the iXBRL tags remain embedded inside the primary .htm document (via ix: namespace tags), but the standalone linkbase artifacts are not.

The linkTo* URLs allow a consumer to retrieve any excluded artifact directly from SEC.gov.

Changes in required content over time

Form POS EX itself has been a stable form across EDGAR's history: its function — adding exhibits to an already-effective Securities Act registration statement under Rule 462(d) — has not changed since the rule's adoption. What has evolved is the population of registration statements being amended and the exhibit tables those statements reference:

• The migration of investment-company registration onto modern Forms N-1A, N-2, N-3, N-4, and N-6 has standardized the lettered EX-99 vocabulary now seen throughout the dataset (EX-99.(A), EX-99.(D), EX-99.(E), EX-99.(H), EX-99.(P), EX-99.(Q), etc.).
• For operating-company POS EX filings, the Regulation S-K Item 601 exhibit table has been amended several times — most notably the 2018 and 2020 SEC amendments that added EX-101.x inline-XBRL exhibits, the cybersecurity-disclosure exhibit revisions, and the simplification of confidential-treatment requests. These shifts are reflected in the exhibit codes that appear in documentFormatFiles[*].type for non-fund issuers.
• Auditor-consent exhibits (EX-23.x) have remained a stable required element across time when financial statements are incorporated into the registration statement and PCAOB rules trigger consent-refresh obligations.
• File-number prefixes within entities[*].fileNo reflect the registration era: 033- series numbers identify pre-1992 registrations, 333- series numbers post-1992. Both continue to appear in current POS EX filings because the form amends whatever older registration statement the filer originally used.

Changes in data format over time

The dataset spans from September 1997 to the present, which crosses three meaningful presentation eras for EDGAR filings:

• 1997 to early 2000s — ASCII / plain-text era. The earliest POS EX filings were submitted as plain-text documents inside the SGML envelope, with no HTML. Document bodies sit directly between <TEXT> and </TEXT> without an inner <HTML> block. Exhibit content is line-broken ASCII, occasionally with table-style alignment via spaces.
• Early 2000s to late 2000s — HTML era. EDGAR's adoption of HTML as the primary document format produced the canonical <DOCUMENT> ... <TEXT><HTML>...</HTML></TEXT></DOCUMENT> shape that dominates the modern dataset. Older filings can still appear as PDF attachments in this era, which is why PDF remains in the dataset's file-type membership.
• 2010s to present — inline-XBRL era for selected filings. A subset of POS EX submissions — particularly those amending operating-company registration statements — are filed as inline XBRL. For these records, the primary document URL in metadata.documentFormatFiles[*].documentUrl is wrapped with https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=..., the body of the primary .htm contains embedded ix: namespace tags, and metadata.dataFiles is populated with the corresponding EX-101.SCH, EX-101.LAB, EX-101.PRE, and instance-XML references. Pure fund POS EX filings are largely outside the inline-XBRL mandate and continue to appear as conventional HTML.

Across all eras the SGML document-envelope header (<DOCUMENT> <TYPE> <SEQUENCE> <FILENAME>) is preserved at the top of every file; only the content between <TEXT> and </TEXT> changes shape across time.

Interpretation notes

• Effectiveness equals filing date. Because POS EX is filed under Rule 462(d), effectivenessDate and the date portion of filedAt are always identical. They are not independent observations and should not be used as separate variables in downstream analysis.
• Use dataFiles to detect XBRL. linkToXbrl is consistently empty even when XBRL artifacts are present; the reliable signal is a non-empty dataFiles array or a documentUrl containing the /ix?doc= viewer prefix.
• Strip the SGML envelope before HTML parsing. Every document file begins with EDGAR's <DOCUMENT> <TYPE> <SEQUENCE> <FILENAME> header lines (and optionally <DESCRIPTION>), followed by <TEXT> and the inner <HTML>...</HTML>. The leading SGML lines are not standard HTML and will confuse strict HTML parsers.
• Image-file references can dangle. metadata.documentFormatFiles may list GRAPHIC entries that have no corresponding file on disk, because images are excluded. Joins between metadata and the file system must be left-tolerant on the metadata side.
• Multi-entity filings are supported. A single POS EX accession can carry multiple entities[*] rows (filer, co-filer, depositor, separate account, dependent registrant). Pivoting filings to a single issuer requires picking the entity with the (Filer) role suffix or the entry whose CIK matches the registration fileNo series.
• Exhibit-code vocabulary is dual. Operating-company filings use Regulation S-K Item 601 numeric codes (EX-3, EX-5, EX-10, EX-23, EX-99); investment-company filings use the lettered EX-99 sub-paragraph codes from the relevant N-form exhibit table (EX-99.(A), EX-99.(D), …). Both vocabularies coexist within the dataset.
• Truncated EDGAR type codes. Some documentFormatFiles[*].type values are stored in EDGAR's fixed-width form (e.g. EX-99.J OTHER OPININ rather than EX-99.J OTHER OPINIONS/CONSENTS). Treat the type string as an opaque code rather than a clean human-readable label.
• Incorporation by reference is heavy. A POS EX rarely re-files the prospectus or financial statements; it incorporates them by reference and adds only the exhibits in scope. The substantive content of the offering must be retrieved from the prior registration statement (the file number in entities[*].fileNo) and any earlier post-effective amendments, not from the POS EX record itself.
• Sequence ordering reflects SGML, not legal hierarchy. sequence: "1" is always the primary POS EX document, but the order of subsequent exhibits is the order in which the filer assembled the SGML submission — it does not necessarily follow the formal exhibit-table numbering. Sort by type for code-driven analysis.

Who Files Form POS EX, Under What Framework, and When

Who files

The filer of a POS EX is the registrant whose Securities Act registration statement is being amended. Form POS EX is a dependent post-effective amendment under the Securities Act of 1933; it cannot exist on its own and never originates a new registration. The legal filer is the same issuer (and any co-registrants or guarantors) named on the underlying Form S-1, S-3, S-4, S-8, S-11, F-1, F-3, F-4, F-10, N-1A, N-2, N-14, or other Securities Act form being supplemented.

Filing population

Three registrant groups account for nearly all POS EX filings:

• Domestic operating-company issuers with an effective Securities Act registration statement (typically S-1, S-3, S-4, S-8, or S-11) adding exhibits required by Item 601 of Regulation S-K, such as a legality opinion (Item 601(b)(5)), tax opinion (Item 601(b)(8)), auditor consent (Item 601(b)(23)), underwriting agreement, or final indenture.
• Foreign private issuers and MJDS-eligible Canadian issuers on F-1, F-3, F-4, or F-10, supplementing exhibits under Item 601 as incorporated through the foreign forms.
• Registered investment companies and BDCs on N-2, N-14, or other non-Rule 485 forms. Open-end funds, ETFs, and most insurance separate accounts on N-1A normally use 485APOS or 485BPOS instead, so POS EX use by funds is narrow and concentrated in N-2 (closed-end funds, BDCs) and N-14 merger contexts.

The filer of record on EDGAR is the registrant CIK on the base registration statement; subsidiary co-registrants and guarantors that signed the original S-3 or S-4 may appear as co-filers when their exhibits are involved.

Trigger

A POS EX is triggered when the registrant needs, after effectiveness, to add or substitute exhibits and nothing else. Common triggers:

• Filing an executed legality or tax opinion when the original registration statement went effective with only a form opinion or a bring-down condition.
• Filing an updated auditor consent when financial statements are being incorporated by reference.
• Filing the final form of an underwriting agreement, indenture, supplemental indenture, note, warrant, or material contract once executed.
• Filing exhibits previously promised by representation or required by Staff comment.
• Filing consents of experts, engineers, or other professionals whose reports are incorporated.

The defining condition is that the amendment is solely to add exhibits. Any change to the prospectus, financial statements, offering size, plan of distribution, or other substantive disclosure pushes the filing out of POS EX and into POS AM (or, for Rule 485 filers, 485APOS or 485BPOS).

Regulatory framework and effectiveness

POS EX operates under Rule 462(d) of the Securities Act (17 CFR 230.462(d)): a post-effective amendment filed solely to add exhibits becomes effective immediately upon filing. There is no Staff review cycle, no acceleration request, and no waiting period. This automatic effectiveness is the operational reason registrants choose POS EX over POS AM when the change is exhibit-only; it allows same-day satisfaction of closing or contractual conditions (for example, filing a final tax opinion at a shelf takedown).

Exhibit content requirements come from:

• Item 601 of Regulation S-K for operating companies and, by incorporation, for foreign private issuers.
• Exhibit instructions to Forms N-1A, N-2, N-14, and N-8B-2 for investment companies and BDCs.

Signatures follow the underlying registration form, typically the registrant, principal executive officer, principal financial officer, principal accounting officer, and a majority of the board (often via attorneys-in-fact under a prior power of attorney).

Timing pattern

There is no periodic schedule. The dataset is event-driven, with each record corresponding to a discrete moment when the registrant perfected the exhibit set of an effective registration statement. A single base registration statement, especially an S-3 shelf, can generate multiple POS EX filings over its life as opinions and consents are filed at each takedown.

Filer versus persons named in exhibits

The legal filer is always the registrant. Counsel issuing legality or tax opinions, accounting firms providing consents, and other experts whose work appears in the new exhibits are not filers. They sign their own opinions and consents as exhibit content, but the EDGAR submission, certifications, and amendment signatures rest with the registrant and its officers and directors.

Dataset coverage

EDGAR became the mandatory channel for Securities Act filings by May 1996. The dataset's earliest sample (September 1997) reflects the post-mandate electronic period. Pre-EDGAR paper amendments under Rule 462(d) served the same exhibit-addition function but are not in this electronic dataset.

How This Dataset Differs From Similar Datasets or Filings

Form POS EX sits among several post-effective amendment forms under the Securities Act of 1933. Its neighbors share filer populations and registration-statement context but differ in the substantive purpose of the amendment, the legal effect at filing, and what actually appears in the submission. POS EX is the narrowest of the group: exhibit-only, immediately effective, no change to offering terms.

POS AM (general post-effective amendment)

The broadest post-effective amendment vehicle. Used when the registrant changes something substantive: adding securities, restating financials, modifying terms, refreshing Section 10(a)(3) disclosure, or carrying forward a shelf. POS AM filings typically include a complete or substantially revised prospectus.

Distinction from POS EX:

• POS AM amends the prospectus or registration statement body; POS EX touches only exhibits.
• POS AM often requires Commission action or relies on a specific rule for effectiveness; POS EX is effective on filing.
• POS AM filings are long and narrative; POS EX is a facing page, short explanatory note, and exhibits.

485APOS and 485BPOS (Rule 485 amendments for investment companies)

The fund-side analogs to POS AM, filed against N-1A and similar fund forms. 485APOS is filed under Rule 485(a) with delayed effectiveness (60 or 75 days) for staff review; 485BPOS is filed under Rule 485(b) for immediately or automatically effective updates such as annual financial refreshes.

Distinction from POS EX:

• Rule 485 already accommodates exhibit additions inside routine fund updates, so funds rarely need a standalone POS EX.
• POS EX is dominated by operating-company issuers (S-1, S-3, S-4, S-11, F-series); 485APOS/BPOS are dominated by open-end funds.
• For a fund-document corpus, use 485APOS/485BPOS; for operating-company post-effective exhibits, use POS EX.

POS AMI (post-effective amendment to a Section 8(c) Investment Company Act filing)

A narrow vehicle used by investment companies (often closed-end funds and BDCs) to amend a registration that became effective under Section 8(c) of the Investment Company Act.

Distinction from POS EX:

• POS AMI carries substantive amendments, not exhibit-only updates.
• Filer population is restricted to investment companies; POS EX is open to any Securities Act registrant.

POS 8C (post-effective amendment under Section 8(c) of the Securities Act)

Filed by closed-end funds to amend a registration that became effective under Securities Act Section 8(c), typically to update the prospectus or add securities. Shares only the "POS" prefix with POS EX.

Distinction from POS EX:

• POS 8C carries real prospectus or offering changes; POS EX is exhibit-only.
• For closed-end fund offering analysis, treat POS 8C as the primary amendment stream and POS EX as a supplementary exhibit feed.

POS462B and POS462C (Rule 462(b) and 462(c) amendments)

POS462B registers up to 20% additional securities of the same class at pricing under Rule 462(b), effective on filing. POS462C is the analogous mechanism for certain unit investment trust contexts. Both share POS EX's "effective on filing" mechanic and brevity.

Distinction from POS EX:

• POS462B/C expand the size of the offering; POS EX does not change offering size or terms.
• POS462B/C reference the prior registration and state the added dollar amount or share count; they are not exhibit vehicles.

S-1/A, S-3/A, S-4/A, F-1/A, N-1A/A (pre-effective amendments)

The "/A" forms amend a registration statement before it has been declared effective, often in response to staff comments, and routinely combine prospectus edits with exhibit additions.

Distinction from POS EX:

• "/A" amendments occur before effectiveness; POS EX exists only after effectiveness.
• "/A" amendments can change anything in the filing; POS EX is restricted to exhibits.
• A complete document trail for an offering generally requires both: pre-effective "/A" amendments (S-1/A, S-3/A, S-4/A, F-1/A, N-1A/A) and post-effective POS EX/POS AM/424B filings.

AW and RW (withdrawal forms)

AW withdraws an application or non-registration filing; RW withdraws a registration statement before it becomes effective. They are sometimes mentally grouped with POS EX as short, housekeeping-style filings tied to the registration pipeline.

Distinction from POS EX:

• AW and RW remove filings from the pipeline; POS EX adds exhibits to a live registration.
• RW operates pre-effectively only; POS EX operates post-effectively only.

Parent registration statement datasets (S-1, S-3, S-4, S-11, F-series, N-1A)

Parent-form datasets contain the original registration statement and exhibits at initial filing or full amendment.

Distinction from POS EX:

• Parent datasets capture the baseline filing; POS EX captures only incremental exhibits added after effectiveness.
• Reconstructing the complete exhibit set at any point in time requires the parent filing plus any "/A" amendments plus the POS EX (and POS AM) chain after effectiveness.

Key differences at a glance

• Scope of change: POS EX = exhibits only. POS AM, POS 8C, POS AMI, 485APOS/BPOS, "/A" forms = prospectus or substantive content. POS462B/C = offering size.
• Timing: POS EX, POS AM, POS 8C, POS AMI, 485APOS/BPOS, POS462B/C are post-effective. "/A" forms are pre-effective. RW is pre-effective withdrawal.
• Effectiveness: POS EX and POS462B/C are effective on filing. 485APOS is delayed; 485BPOS is automatic for permitted updates; POS AM varies.
• Filer base: POS EX is dominated by operating companies. 485APOS/BPOS, POS AMI, POS 8C are restricted to investment companies.
• Document footprint: POS EX is short, with a facing page, brief note, and one or more exhibits (legal opinions, auditor consents, underwriting agreements, material contracts). POS AM and "/A" forms are full or partial prospectuses.

Boundary summary

POS EX is the only dedicated, post-effective, exhibit-only amendment vehicle for non-fund Securities Act registrants, effective on filing and carrying no change to offering terms. It is not interchangeable with POS AM (substantive amendments), 485APOS/BPOS (fund updates), POS AMI or POS 8C (investment-company amendments), POS462B/C (offering-size expansion), "/A" forms (pre-effective amendments), AW/RW (withdrawals), or the parent registration datasets (baseline filings). Use POS EX specifically for tracking post-effectiveness exhibit additions such as counsel opinions, auditor consents, and underwriting agreements tied to shelf takedowns and other live offerings; combine it with the neighbors above for any broader registration-statement reconstruction.

Who Uses This Dataset

Because Form POS EX is a mechanical Rule 462(d) post-effective amendment used to add or update exhibits on an already-effective registration statement, the user base is narrow and exhibit-focused.

Capital-markets attorneys

Issuer- and underwriter-side securities lawyers mine the dataset for precedent legal opinions (validly issued / fully paid / non-assessable, indenture enforceability, tax opinions) and underwriting agreements added after a shelf goes effective. The explanatory note tells them why the amendment was filed; the exhibit index and signature blocks show which counsel signed what. Used to benchmark drafting language and confirm that POS EX (versus a 424 supplement or full post-effective amendment) is the right vehicle.

Investment-company and fund counsel

Counsel to open-end funds, closed-end funds, BDCs, and UITs pull sample auditor consents, custody and distribution agreements, sub-advisory agreements, and seed-capital share opinions filed when new classes or sub-advised series are added. Workflow: confirm whether a peer family uses POS EX or a 485 amendment for a given exhibit, then reuse the structure.

Audit firms tracking their own consents

National-office and risk-management teams at registered public accounting firms monitor every filing where their consent appears as an exhibit. POS EX often exists solely to add a re-issued auditor consent into a still-effective shelf, so the dataset is a clean tracking source. They reconcile the consent text, signing office, and date against internal engagement records to catch stale or unauthorized usage.

Issuer disclosure and compliance staff

In-house securities-disclosure teams use the metadata (accession, filing date, CIK, form) and exhibit indexes to verify their own Item 601 exhibit history, prepare internal memos on whether a planned update qualifies for POS EX treatment, and assemble exhibit packages for audit or regulatory review.

EDGAR filing and document-management teams

Filing specialists at law firms, financial printers, and in-house securities groups use the corpus as a reference for facing-page format, explanatory-note placement, exhibit numbering, and document segmentation when preparing EDGAR-compliant POS EX submissions and training new staff.

Fund administrators and transfer-agent legal ops

Operational legal teams confirm that participation agreements, custody amendments, Rule 12b-1 plan amendments, and accountant consents tied to financials they helped prepare are properly added to the effective registration. The dataset supports reconciliation between the operational launch of a new vehicle and its public exhibit record.

Knowledge-management and competitive-intelligence analysts at law firms

KM teams parse the exhibit index plus opinion signature blocks to map which firms sign which opinion types on which transaction structures. Output: league-table summaries, precedent libraries indexed by transaction type, and pitch-deck experience charts.

Data engineers at financial-data vendors

Vendor teams ingest file-level metadata, exhibit-type tags, parsed exhibit text, and the link back to the parent registration statement to build exhibit search products, filing-history APIs, and counsel/auditor attribution datasets. The narrow form scope and complete coverage from 1997 forward make it clean to integrate alongside S-1, S-3, S-11, N-1A, and N-2 corpora.

NLP and machine-learning teams

ML teams use the templated-but-variable opinion and consent text to train models for opinion-scope classification, governing-law tagging, qualification and assumption extraction, and consent-versus-opinion separation. RAG developers building counsel-facing retrieval systems seed exhibit-specific indexes from the corpus.

Securities-regulation researchers

Academic and policy researchers study Rule 462(d) usage empirically: which registrant classes rely on POS EX, timing relative to shelf takedowns, and the mix of exhibits added post-effectively. Filing date, parent form type, registrant identifiers, and exhibit composition support work on disclosure efficiency and the boundary between mechanical and substantive amendments.

High-value content is consistent across users: the explanatory note, the exhibit index, the underlying legal opinions and auditor consents, and the metadata linking each amendment back to its parent registration statement.

Specific Use Cases

The Form POS EX Files Dataset is used wherever post-effective exhibit additions matter: legal-opinion benchmarking, auditor-consent monitoring, fund exhibit-package reconstruction, and registration-history reconciliation. The use cases below show how specific record fields and exhibit codes drive concrete workflows.

1. Auditor-consent monitoring for accounting firms

National-office risk teams at audit firms scan every POS EX where their consent appears, since these filings often exist solely to drop in a re-issued accountant consent on a still-effective shelf. The workflow filters documentFormatFiles[*].type for EX-23.1/EX-23.2 (operating-company filings) and EX-99.J OTHER OPININ (fund filings), pulls the named signing office and date from the exhibit body, and reconciles each hit against the firm's internal engagement-letter database to flag stale, unauthorized, or wrong-office consents within hours of filing.

2. Counsel league tables and opinion-precedent libraries

Knowledge-management teams at law firms build league tables of which firms sign which opinion types on which structures by parsing EX-5 and EX-99.(I) exhibits across the corpus. Joining the signature block (firm name, office) with entities[*].companyName, fileNo, and effectivenessDate yields per-firm counts of validly-issued/fully-paid opinions, indenture enforceability opinions, and tax opinions per quarter. The resulting precedent library is indexed by transaction type and reused for pitch decks and first-draft templates.

3. Shelf takedown exhibit reconstruction

Capital-markets lawyers and deal-data vendors reconstruct the live exhibit set on a 333- shelf by chaining the parent S-3 with every subsequent POS EX on the same entities[*].fileNo. Sorting by effectivenessDate and pivoting on documentFormatFiles[*].type produces a timeline of underwriting agreements (EX-1.1), legal opinions (EX-5), and auditor consents (EX-23) attached at each takedown, which feeds deal-tracking dashboards and prospectus supplement audits.

4. Fund exhibit-package benchmarking across peer trusts

Fund counsel and administrators benchmark how peer trusts assemble distribution, custody, and Rule 12b-1 exhibits when adding new classes or sub-advised series. The workflow groups records by seriesAndClassesContractsInformation and the lettered EX-99 codes (EX-99.(D) advisory, EX-99.(E) distribution, EX-99.(G) custody, EX-99.(H) transfer-agent/services schedules, EX-99.(M) 12b-1, EX-99.(P) codes of ethics, EX-99.(Q) powers of attorney) to confirm whether a planned amendment should be filed as POS EX or routed through 485APOS/485BPOS instead.

5. Vendor ingestion for exhibit-search and counsel-attribution APIs

Data engineers at financial-data vendors ingest the per-record metadata.json plus the parsed exhibit bodies to power exhibit-search products and counsel/auditor attribution feeds. They key on accessionNo, entities[*].cik, entities[*].fileNo, and documentFormatFiles[*].type to join POS EX records back to parent S-1/S-3/N-1A/N-2 corpora, and use linkToFilingDetails plus documentUrl to backfill any GRAPHIC artifacts that the ZIP excludes.

6. NLP training data for opinion and consent classifiers

ML teams use the templated-but-variable text in EX-5, EX-23, EX-99.(I), and EX-99.J OTHER OPININ exhibits as labeled training data for opinion-scope classification, governing-law tagging, qualification/assumption extraction, and consent-vs-opinion separation. The EDGAR <TYPE> code in the SGML envelope provides a clean weak label, and the corpus is small enough to make full-text indexing and fine-tuning tractable on a single workstation.

7. Empirical research on Rule 462(d) usage

Securities-regulation researchers study which registrant classes rely on Rule 462(d), how POS EX timing aligns with shelf takedowns, and which exhibits are added post-effectively versus folded into pre-effective /A amendments. They use filedAt, entities[*].sic, entities[*].fileNo (the 033- vs 333- prefix), and the distribution of exhibit type codes to quantify the boundary between mechanical and substantive post-effective amendments across decades.

Dataset Access

Dataset Index JSON API: [https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-pos-ex-files.json](https://sec-api.io/datasets)

The dataset index endpoint returns dataset-level metadata along with a list of all available container files. Returned fields include the dataset name, description, last update timestamp, earliest sample date, total record count, total size, covered form types (POS EX), container format (ZIP), and file types contained in the archives (TXT, JSON, HTML, PDF). Each container entry includes its download URL, key, size, record count, and last updated timestamp. This endpoint can be polled daily to detect which monthly containers were modified in the most recent refresh, enabling incremental downloads instead of refetching the full archive.

This endpoint does not require an API key.

Example response:

          1
          {
        

          2
            "datasetId": "1f13365b-9ae0-693d-9fd2-29f7fc3340f3",
        

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

          4
            "name": "Form POS EX Files Dataset",
        

          5
            "description": "Form POS EX is a post-effective amendment filed solely to add exhibits to a registration statement under the Securities Act of 1933.",
        

          6
            "updatedAt": "2026-05-05T02:49:06.129Z",
        

          7
            "earliestSampleDate": "1997-09-01",
        

          8
            "totalRecords": 20614,
        

          9
            "totalSize": 255860685,
        

          10
            "formTypes": ["POS EX"],
        

          11
            "containerFormat": "ZIP",
        

          12
            "fileTypes": ["TXT", "JSON", "HTML", "PDF"],
        

          13
            "containers": [
        

          14
              {
        

          15
                "downloadUrl": "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-pos-ex-files/2026/2026-05.zip",
        

          16
                "key": "2026/2026-05.zip",
        

          17
                "size": 13818783,
        

          18
                "records": 154,
        

          19
                "updatedAt": "2026-05-05T02:49:06.129Z"
        

          20
              }
        

          21
            ]
        

          22
          }
        

Download Entire Dataset: [https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-pos-ex-files.zip](https://sec-api.io/datasets)?token=YOUR_API_KEY

Downloads the complete Form POS EX Files Dataset as a single ZIP archive covering filings from September 1997 onwards. This endpoint requires an API key.

Download Single Container: [https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-pos-ex-files/2026/2026-05.zip](https://sec-api.io/datasets)?token=YOUR_API_KEY

Downloads one monthly container ZIP file (path format YYYY/YYYY-MM.zip), which is useful for incremental updates or when only a specific month is needed. This endpoint requires an API key.

Frequently Asked Questions

What form does this dataset cover?

The dataset covers Form POS EX, a post-effective amendment to a Securities Act of 1933 registration statement filed under Rule 462(d) solely to add exhibits — or replace previously filed exhibits — without altering the substantive terms of the offering or the prospectus disclosure.

What does one record in this dataset represent?

One record corresponds to a single Form POS EX submission accepted by EDGAR — one accession number — materialized as a folder named after the 18-digit, dash-stripped accession number. Inside that folder sit the original primary and exhibit documents the registrant submitted, plus a single metadata.json describing the filing.

Who is required to file Form POS EX?

The filer is the registrant whose Securities Act registration statement is being amended. POS EX cannot exist on its own; the legal filer is the same issuer (and any co-registrants or guarantors) named on the underlying S-1, S-3, S-4, S-8, S-11, F-1, F-3, F-4, F-10, N-1A, N-2, N-14, or other Securities Act form. In practice, three groups dominate: domestic operating-company shelf issuers, foreign private issuers and MJDS-eligible Canadian issuers, and registered investment companies and BDCs filing under non-Rule 485 forms (notably N-2 and N-14).

When does a POS EX become effective?

Immediately upon filing. POS EX operates under Rule 462(d) of the Securities Act (17 CFR 230.462(d)), so there is no Staff review cycle, no acceleration request, and no waiting period. The dataset's effectivenessDate field is therefore always equal to the calendar-day portion of filedAt.

What time period does the dataset cover?

The dataset's earliest sample date is September 1997, the post-EDGAR-mandate electronic period, and coverage continues to the present. Pre-EDGAR paper amendments under Rule 462(d) served the same exhibit-addition function but are not included.

What file format is the dataset distributed in?

The dataset is delivered as one ZIP per calendar month, named YYYY-MM.zip and organized under a YYYY/ prefix on the SEC-API datasets endpoint. The file types found inside the archives are TXT, JSON, HTML, and PDF, although modern records consist almost exclusively of metadata.json plus a handful of .htm documents.

How does this dataset differ from POS AM and 485BPOS?

POS EX is the narrowest of the post-effective amendment vehicles — exhibit-only and immediately effective under Rule 462(d). POS AM is the general post-effective amendment used for substantive changes (prospectus updates, restated financials, modified terms, shelf carryforward) and is typically long and narrative. 485BPOS is the Rule 485(b) post-effective amendment for open-end funds, immediately effective and limited to specified non-material updates including certain exhibit additions, which is why open-end funds normally add exhibits via 485BPOS rather than POS EX.

Are images and the EDGAR index page included in each record?

No. Image files (GRAPHIC documents — .jpg, .gif logos, signature scans, fund-marketing artwork), the complete-submission .txt bundle, the EDGAR <accession>-index.htm page, and standalone XBRL companion files (EX-101.SCH, EX-101.LAB, EX-101.PRE, extracted instance XML) are deliberately excluded from the ZIP. The metadata.json linkTo* URLs allow consumers to retrieve any excluded artifact directly from SEC.gov.