SEC considering treating index providers as investment advisers

No longer 'data providers'

The US Securities and Exchange Commission is considering new rules that would treat index providers, model portfolio providers and pricing services as investment advisers.

The regulator issued a request for comment on the issue that would see providers such as MSCI, S&P Global and FTSE Russell, treated as giving investment advice rather than merely information and data. SEC chair Gary Gensler stated on Wednesday (15 June) that changes in the industry, such as the growth of index trackers and the increased number of specialised indices, have left indexes "increasingly influential". ETFs and other index trackers own at least a fifth of all American public companies, the SEC said, while index providers calculating over 3 million performance benchmarks for ...