August 6, 2026
For an ETF, the website is not just a marketing tool (although it is certainly that too). It is also a disclosure obligation that comes due every business day before the opening bell, and it is reviewed.
In ADI 2025-15, published in January 2025, the Division of Investment Management’s Disclosure Review and Accounting Office set out what its staff observed when it examined fund website postings, including those made under Rule 6c-11. The ETF findings deserve close attention, because most describe funds that almost certainly believed they were compliant, but they were not. The staff found that the data was there, but the presentation, the timing, or the labeling was not.
The following guidance can help ensure that your ETF is compliant:
Rule 6c-11 requires an ETF relying on the rule to disclose five things publicly and prominently on its website:
Simple enough on paper. The Staff’s observations show where it slips. Some ETFs omitted CUSIPs or other identifiers from their holdings tables. Some expressed premium and discount as a dollar figure rather than the percentage the rule prescribes. Some substituted their own terminology for premiums and discounts or dropped “30-day” from the bid-ask spread label — leaving investors unable to tell what period the figure covered. The rule does not dictate wording, but the staff was direct about its view that describing the required information clearly serves investors.
Historic premium and discount data drew a second criticism: in some cases, it had not been refreshed to reflect the most recent quarter-end. This is a quarterly task that is easy to miss precisely because everything else on the page updates daily.
ETFs operating under an exemptive order rather than Rule 6c-11 drew scrutiny too: some had not presented historic premium and discount information as their relief or Form N-1A required. Non-transparent and semi-transparent ETFs carry further conditions, including a website legend distinguishing them from fully transparent funds.
If an ETF’s premium or discount exceeds 2% for more than seven consecutive trading days, the fund must disclose that fact on its website immediately following the eighth trading day, together with a discussion of the factors it reasonably believes materially contributed. The disclosure must remain posted for one year from the day it first appears.
This is the clearest failure the staff has identified. Relatively few ETFs breached the threshold — but among those that did, a significant number posted nothing.
The reason is structural. Every other item in the disclosure suite is a recurring publishing task that can be automated end to end. This one is conditional. It requires daily monitoring of a threshold against a consecutive-day count, an alert when the count crosses eight, and then something no data feed can produce: a written explanation of causation. A fund that treats its website as a feed rather than a monitored control will discover the gap only when someone else does.
Two details trip up even funds that catch the trigger. The clock counts consecutive trading days, not calendar days. And the one-year retention period runs from first posting, not from the date the premium or discount normalizes.
Rule 6c-11(c)(1) requires that the information be disclosed prominently. That word carries real weight, and it is where the staff’s findings become uncomfortable.
For some ETFs, reviewers could not locate the historic premium and discount information at all. For others, they found it, but noted it was difficult to find.
Consider what that means. A fund can calculate every figure correctly, publish every element on time, and still fall short because a reviewer had to hunt. Prominence can be undermined by a redesign or a simple web change. So while an ETF site can and should be clean, easy to navigate, and branded, it cannot be at the cost of prominently displaying required information.
What Does This Mean for Me?
There are a few questions to consider in making sure your ETF site is meeting compliance standards:
If you answer “no” to any of the questions above, it may be time to update your ETF site.
FilePoint handles ETF website hosting and regulatory content for fund families and administrators, including the daily disclosure suite, quarterly historic updates, and threshold monitoring. If you would like a review of your current fund pages against these requirements, or if you need help maintaining or building a new site, let us know. We’re here to help.
