FinCEN Proposes Customer Due Diligence Rule

Anti-Money Laundering FinCEN Bank Secrecy Act Customer Due Diligence KYC Agency Rule-Making & Guidance

On July 30, FinCEN released a proposed rule that would amend BSA regulations to clarify and add customer due diligence (CDD) obligations for banks and other financial institutions, including brokers or dealers in securities, mutual funds, futures commission merchants, and introducing brokers in commodities. The rule would not cover other entities subject to FinCEN regulations that are not already required to have a customer identification program (CIP)—e.g money services businesses—but FinCEN may extend CDD requirements in the future to these, and potentially other types of financial institutions. The proposed rule states that as part of the existing regulatory requirement to have a CIP, covered institutions are already obligated to identify and verify the identity of their customers. The proposed rule would add to that base CDD requirement, new requirements to: (i) understand the nature and purpose of customer relationships; and (ii) conduct ongoing monitoring to maintain and update customer information and to identify and report suspicious transactions. The proposed rule also would add a so-called beneficial ownership requirement, which would require institutions to know and verify the identities of any individual who owns at least 25% of a legal entity, or who controls the legal entity.

FinCEN emphasizes that nothing in the proposal is intended to limit the due diligence expectations of the federal functional regulators or in any way limit their existing regulatory discretion. To that end, the rule would incorporate the CDD elements on nature and purpose and ongoing monitoring into FinCEN’s existing AML program requirements, which generally provide that an AML program is adequate if, among other things, the program complies with the regulation of its federal functional regulator governing such programs. FinCEN does not believe that the new CDD requirements will require covered institutions to perform any additional activities or operations, but acknowledges the rule may necessitate revisions to written policies and procedures. FinCEN also recognizes that financial institutions will be required to modify existing customer onboarding processes to incorporate the beneficial ownership requirement. As such, FinCEN proposes an effective date of one year from the date the final rule is issued. Comments on the proposal are due 60 days from publication of the proposal in the Federal Register.