By Pete Schroeder
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said on Friday it would delay new submissions of portfolio data by mutual funds, as the regulator beefs up its cybersecurity.
Large mutual funds will have an extra nine months before they are required to submit monthly details about their portfolio holdings to the agency. Instead, funds will be able to hold that information internally and provide it to the regulator upon request.
The delay comes as the SEC reviews its cybersecurity protocols after a 2016 hack of its EDGAR filing system. That breach was first disclosed by the SEC in September.
"Today's Commission action is a prudent step as we continue our work to uplift EDGAR and other systems and assess our data needs, including how and when we collect market-sensitive data," SEC Chairman Jay Clayton said.
Originally, the SEC was going to require large funds to begin submitting data through EDGAR on June 1, 2018, with smaller funds set to begin doing the same one year later.
But now large funds will have until April 2019 before submitting that information, and April 2020 for smaller funds.