Regulators have been discussing issues with "complex products" since the Great Recession. The list of such products is ever-expanding – today, in the regulator’s eyes, virtually anything other than a simple mutual fund or equity is a complex product. Complex products generate enhanced scrutiny from regulators. Variable annuities were the first complex product (even prior to the Great Recession and even before "complex product" was a regulatory term-of-art). They have been a regulatory focus…

This Alert continues FinCEN’s focus on transnational activity. Apart from Executive Order 14157, transnational activity was one of FinCEN’s priorities in the and it clearly remains a priority through the present day.

FinCEN regularly attempts to pinpoint criminal activity and priorities through review of suspicious activity reports ("SARs"). This SAR review typically has a significant sample size, both in terms of SARs filed and the time frame in which the SARs were filed. This…

In longstanding regulatory , FINRA states that it explicitly recognized the concept of "Credit for Extraordinary Cooperation." The key is that the cooperation must be "Extraordinary"—that is, it must be something more than that otherwise required under FINRA's Rules (such as responding completely and truthfully to a FINRA Rule 8210 request). Credit for Extraordinary Cooperation is maximized when: (1) the firm self-reports the violations to FINRA; (2) to the extent feasible, the…

This Order provides an exemption from the method by which banks obtain taxpayer identification number ("TIN") information from customers before opening an account. Under the Order, banks have the option of using an alternative collection method to obtain TIN information from a third-party source rather than the customer, provided that the bank complies with the CIP rule requirements in that the methods used are risk-based and reasonable.

Essentially, this modernizes the methods by…