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Financial Services Law Insights and Observations

FinCEN Issues FAQs Regarding Customer Due Diligence Requirements

Anti-Money Laundering FinCEN Customer Due Diligence CDD Rule Beneficial Ownership

Consumer Finance

On July 19, FinCEN issued FAQs to clarify the scope of the May 2016 Customer Due Diligence (CDD) final rule. As previously covered by InfoBytes, and as outlined in Question 2 of the recently-released FAQs, the final rule imposes standardized CDD requirements for federally regulated banks and federally insured credit unions, mutual funds, brokers or dealers in securities, futures commission merchants, and introducing brokers in commodities (collectively, covered financial institutions). While the FAQs provide a detailed description of the CDD requirements, they state that, “[i]n short, covered financial institutions are now required to obtain, verify, and record the identities of the beneficial owners of legal entity customers.” Notably, Question 5 of the FAQs clarifies that the CDD rule amends the AML program requirements to explicitly require covered financial institutions to implement and maintain risk-based procedures for conducting ongoing customer due diligence, including, but not limited to, (i) understanding the nature and purpose of the customer relationship; and (ii) conducting ongoing monitoring to identify and report suspicious transactions, as well as maintain and update customer information on a risk basis. The FAQs also note that covered financial institutions must include CDD procedures in their AML compliance program. In addition to discussing definitions for certain terms within the CDD rule, such as “account” and “beneficial owner,” the FAQs outline, among other things, the type of beneficial ownership information that covered financial institutions must collect for legal entity customers. Finally, as reiterated in the FAQs, the CDD rule has an effective date of July 11, 2016 and an applicability date of May 11, 2018.