SEC Connect

SEC Section 16 of The Securities Exchange Act of 1934 requires corporate insiders to publicly disclose their company affiliations, material changes in their holdings or unreported insider transactions through various regulatory filings with the SEC. Specifically, Section 16 mandates that Forms 3, 4 and 5 be filed by insiders—in other words, company investors who are directly or indirectly beneficial owners of more than 10% of stock in a company or directors and officers of the issuer of the securities. An insider of a first-time securities issuer or a new insider at an already-registered securities issuer must carry out the initial filing, Form 3. Form 4 is used to report material changes in insiders’ holdings. Form 5 reports any transactions that should have been included on a previous Form 4 or were eligible for deferred reporting such as gifts of shares or multiple small transactions. Section 16 reporting must be submitted electronically through the EDGAR computer system for the receipt, acceptance, review and dissemination of documents submitted in electronic format to the Commission. The SEC also requires companies to post the forms on their websites by the end of the next business day after filing them. Section 16 reporting deadlines were accelerated due to provisions of the SOX, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. For support and additional information, explore our solutions here.

A CIK confirmation code (CCC) is equivalent to a PIN, also known as a personal identification number, and is confidential. The CCC must be eight characters. It is case-sensitive and must contain at least one number and one special character (@, #, $, or *). Sample CCC: ysmajr4$. A CIK confirmation code never expires. The CCC allows a filing to be made on your behalf by a filing agent such as Toppan Merrill. For support and additional information, explore our SEC reporting solutions.

A CIK, central index key, is equivalent to an account number to identify the EDGAR filer. Using the correct CIK is critical for a filing to be associated with the correct EDGAR filer. The CIK is available to the public and cannot be changed. However, when two companies merge, or a company changes their name, the CIK of the surviving/new entity can be associated with the new name by updating the company profile in the EDGAR database, which is a computer system for the receipt, acceptance, review and dissemination of documents submitted in electronic format to the Commission. For support and additional information, explore our SEC reporting solutions.