Disclosure Documents

Unless an applicable exemption has been filed, each commodity trading advisor (CTA) registered or required to be registered must provide a disclosure document to prospective clients for the trading program to which the CTA seeks to direct the client's commodity interest account or to guide the client's commodity interest trading by recommending specific transactions. CTAs that are required to provide a disclosure document to clients must file the disclosure document with NFA.

Filing Disclosure Documents

CTAs required to provide a disclosure document to clients must file all disclosure documents and any subsequently updated disclosure documents with NFA for review and acceptance prior to their use.

NFA Member CTAs that engage in activities related to virtual currencies or virtual currency derivatives have additional disclosure requirements.

Disclosure documents must be filed using NFA's Electronic Disclosure Document Filing System.

Disclosure documents should be filed using one of the following formats:

  • Microsoft Word
  • PDF
  • Rich Text

Once the initial disclosure document for a program(s) has been filed, two copies of all futures disclosure documents must be filed with NFA. Both a clean and a "marked" copy are required. The marked copy must identify all deletions and additions that have been made to the disclosure document previously filed with NFA. This may be done, for example, by striking through deletions and underlining additions. 

Upon receipt of a disclosure document, NFA will email a confirmation receipt to the NFA Member CTA.


Disclosure Document Review Process

NFA's goal is to complete its initial review of a disclosure document within 14 days of receipt. Once NFA completes its review, it will communicate either its acceptance of the disclosure document or any deficiencies. The CTA is required to correct any deficiencies and re-submit the disclosure document to NFA for review before it will be accepted. Once a Member has filed a disclosure document with NFA that has been accepted, subsequent disclosure documents may be eligible for instant filing if there have been no material changes since last acceptance and all changes have been highlighted. Instant filing will result in a review process of three business days.

NFA's review is designed to ensure that disclosure documents contain all of the required information and that such information is consistent with information on record with NFA. It is the CTA's responsibility to ensure it uses a disclosure document that is accurate and complete.

During the course of an NFA examination, a CTA's disclosure document may be reviewed to ensure consistency between the firm's business operations and the information included in the disclosure document. As a result, NFA's acceptance of a filed disclosure document does not prevent NFA or the CFTC from raising issues with regard to the disclosure document in the future.