In Focus

In Joint Letter, CII Opposes Bill to Override SEC Decision on Bundling Research Costs

CII, with the CFA Institute and the Healthy Markets Association, sent a letter May 23 to the chair and ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee opposing a bill that would override the SEC’s pending decision to allow temporary no-action relief it granted in 2017 to expire. That relief, which the staff gave to the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA), allows certain financial institutions to continue to bundle the costs for research with those for trade execution services and avoid registration as investment advisers. Many institutional investors prefer to shop separately for research and trading services, and oppose being compelled to trade with brokers to pay for research because it often leads to greater costs.

CII Urges FASB to Make Accounting Changes in Wake of SVB Failure

In an April 27 letter, CII asked the Financial Standards Accounting Board (FASB) to re-examine its rules for how companies classify debt securities. Specifically, CII asked the FASB to consider eliminating the “held-to-maturity” classification of debt securities, which lets companies report the value of their bonds at amortized cost instead of at fair market value. CII also asked the FASB to consider improvements to financial instrument disclosures about liquidity risk and interest rate risk in the financial statement footnotes.  CII’s letter noted that Silicon Valley Bank, prior to its collapse, classified many of its assets as held-to-maturity, did not explicitly disclose its liquidity risk and provided limited information about its interest rate risk in its financial statement footnotes.