FINRA consolidated criteria for designation of participants in FINRA's Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery Testing ("BC/DR Testing") under Regulation Systems Compliance and Integrity (Regulation SCI). FINRA Rule 4380 authorizes FINRA to designate firms that must participate in annual BC/DR Testing based on standards, which FINRA provided in two previous Regulatory Notices (see here and here). FINRA made no substantive changes. FINRA stated that it will notify firms that meet such criteria in April of each year.

A Silicon Valley-based marketplace lender agreed to settle SEC charges for having "miscalculated and materially overstated" annualized net returns to investors. Prosper Funding LLC ("Prosper") is a marketplace lender that (i) provides unsecured consumer loans to borrowers and (ii) issues securities that include notes connected to the performance of the consumer loans ("Prosper Securities"). According to the SEC Order, Prosper excluded from its return performance to investors on certain Prosper Securities connected to certain "charged-off consumer loans" that had been resold in the secondary

The CFTC adopted rule changes allowing exceptions from the requirement that "covered persons" ( i.e., futures commission merchants, retail foreign exchange dealers, CTAs, CPOs, introducing brokers, major swap participants and swap dealers) must send customers annual privacy notices. The new amendments were adopted as originally proposed. Under the adopted amendments, annual privacy notices will no longer be required if a "covered person": (i) does not share nonpublic personal information except as described in certain specified exceptions and (ii) has not changed its policies and practices

SEC Commissioner Elad Roisman highlighted the theme of improved transparency in fixed income markets.

The Federal Reserve Board, the FDIC and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency proposed to amend a capital requirement for U.S. banking organizations engaged primarily in custodial activities, as mandated by the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief and Consumer Protection Act (the "Relief Act"). The proposal implements Section 402 of the Relief Act, which directs the federal banking regulators to modify the capital rule to exclude from the supplementary leverage ratio ("SLR") certain custodial banks' central bank deposits. A custodial banking organization would be permitted to exclude