A Florida provider of Internet services says it will launch one this month giving individual investors and small companies immediate access to SEC filings.
Internet Financial Network, of Davie, Fla., plans to begin selling the service, named Smart Edgar, in mid-April.
It will let users cull information from Edgar, the electronic data gathering analysis and retrieval system of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Smart Edgar is designed for corporations, investment firms, mutual fund companies, and institutional investors as well as individuals, the company said.
"Our company's intention is to be the best purveyor of Edgar data and to transform the way data are used by companies," said Clifford Boro, the 26- year-old president of Internet Financial Network.
Smart Edgar is a cheaper version of the company's Edgar Watch, an Internet-based service aimed at larger investment operations. Edgar Watch has about 30 users.
Information from the Edgar data base can be obtained free through the SEC's Internet Web site. But Internet Financial's services can get documents such as annual reports, financial statements, and prospectuses more quickly, according to Internet Financial's executives. The SEC site gets requests for about 90,000 documents daily.
Internet Financial Network pays about $25,000 monthly for a direct feed from Edgar to its data base.
Like Edgar Watch, Smart Edgar will let users program their software to inform them immediately when information from particular companies is filed with the SEC, Mr. Boro said.
His company's service offerings face some competition.
Disclosure, a Bethesda, Md.-based company, recently began transmitting SEC information over the Internet. Other competitors of Internet Financial include Dow Jones and Moody's Investors Service.
Michael Bartell, an associate executive director at the SEC, said it does not maintain special relationships with commercial companies, nor does it endorse any particular vendor.
However, he said, the SEC supports the companies' efforts to expand service offerings.
Internet Financial Network has been in business only since 1994. When it was formed, the company received about $350,000 of venture capital from Patricof & Associates, New York.
More recently, two large financial services companies - the Travelers Group, parent of New York-based brokerage firm Smith Barney, and Data Broadcasting Corp., a Jackson, Wyo.-based provider of real-time market information - bought a 51% stake for an undisclosed amount.
The company's most prominent alliance is with One Source Information Services, a former division of Lotus Software and one of Wall Street's top data vendors.
One Source provides Internet Financial Network with a sales force and customer service employees.
