The NFA has announced changes to NFA's BASIC system in order to comply with NFA Financial Requirement Section 16 (which became effective on September 1) and provisions set by NFA's August Board Meeting. Section 16 requires FCMs to submit certain financial related information to NFA on a monthly, semi-monthly and daily basis. At its August meeting, NFA's Board of Directors determined that in order to assist customers in their due diligence review of an FCM, certain FCM financial data should be made publicly available on NFA's website. NFA's Board determined that the best way to display this

The NFA announced that effective October 1, 2012, FCMs which are currently regulated by a U.S. prudential regulator or that are also in some capacity registrants of the SEC (meaning, as a practical matter, FCMs that are also SEC-registered broker-dealers) must have a designated CCO under CFTC Rule 3.3, and that person must also be a listed principal of the firm. Further, those FCMs will be required to file the CCO Annual Report as of the date of the firm's first fiscal year end after October 1. View notice in full here (links externally to NFA website).

ICE Clear U.S. announced the following deadlines: November 8 - ICE Clear U.S. will be required by the CFTC to collect gross customer margins (GCM) from its clearing members. November 3 - ICE Clear U.S. will implement system upgrades to accommodate the submission of GCM files. To ensure that clearing members can comply with this new CFTC requirement, ICE Clear U.S. will support a production parallel test of GCM file submissions. Testing will being on on September 24 and continue until November 2. View notice in full here (links externally to ICE website).

The Dodd-Frank Act created the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) to identify and address threats to the stability of the U.S. financial system and Office of Financial Research (OFR) to support FSOC and Congress by providing financial research and data. In this report, the GAO was asked to examine (1) any challenges FSOC and OFR face in fulfilling their missions (2) FSOC and OFR's efforts to establish management structures and mechanisms to carry out their missions, (3) FSOC and OFR's activities for supporting collaboration among their members and external stakeholders, and (4) the

This report examines (1) the significant changes community banks and credit unions have undergone in the past decade and the factors that have contributed to such changes, and (2) Dodd-Frank Act provisions that regulators, industry associations, and others expect to impact community banks and credit unions, including their small business lending. GAO analyzed regulatory and other data on community banks and credit unions; reviewed academic and other relevant studies; and interviewed federal regulators, community banks, credit unions, state regulatory and industry associations, academics, and