Notices to Members

December 13, 2006

Amended Interpretive Notice to Compliance Rule 2-9: FCM and IB Anti-Money Laundering Programs

NFA's Board of Directors recently amended NFA's Interpretive Notice to Compliance Rule 2-9: FCM and IB Anti-Money Laundering Programs to update the notice to include all FCM and IB anti-money laundering requirements that have been adopted by FinCEN and/or the CFTC since NFA first issued the interpretive notice in April 2002.

The amendments to the interpretive notice do not expand FCM/IB responsibilities, but rather consolidate the current requirements into one document. FCMs and IBs, however, must continue to keep current with federal rulemakings as they are adopted.

The revisions to the interpretive notice include the following:

• The addition of Customer Identification Program (CIP) requirements and related guidance;


• The deletion of the prior Customer Identification and Verification section of the notice because it was replaced with the CIP requirements;


• The addition of Suspicious Activity Reporting (SAR) requirements and related guidance;


• The addition of 314(a) Information Request requirements and related guidance. This section includes the requirement that FCMs designate a point of contact for these requests and that any changes to the point of contact information be immediately reported to NFA;


• The addition of the Private Banking and Correspondent Account requirements and related guidance;


• A change to the independent review requirement for FCMs/IBs that do only proprietary business or are inactive. These firms will be permitted to conduct the independent review on a 2-year, rather than 1-year, cycle;


• A relocation of the Allocation of Compliance Program Responsibilities section to clarify that the requirements of this section are not limited to CIP allocations.

FCM and IB Members should review their AML Compliance Program to ensure that it is in full compliance with these requirements. In recent months, NFA's Business Conduct Committee has issued a number of Complaints involving violations of these requirements. The most common violations involve an inadequate Customer Identification Program, failing to adopt adequate procedures for suspicious activity monitoring and reporting, failing to complete the annual independent review of the program and failing to provide annual training to appropriate employees.

If you have any questions on the amendments to the Interpretive Notice, please do not hesitate to contact Sharon Pendleton, Director, Compliance at spendleton@nfa.futures.org or Carol Wooding, Assistant General Counsel, at cwooding@nfa.futures.org.