
A Deep Dive Into FinCEN’s Latest Proposals Under the CTA
On December 16, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (“FinCEN”) issued a 54-page notice of proposed rulemaking (“NPRM”) regarding access by authorized recipients to beneficial ownership information (“BOI”) that will be reported to FinCEN under the Corporate Transparency Act (“CTA”). The CTA requires covered entities – including most domestic corporations and foreign entities registered to do business in the U.S. – to report BOI and company applicant information to a database created and run by FinCEN upon the entities’ creation or registration within the U.S. This database will be accessible by U.S. and foreign law enforcement and regulators, and to U.S. financial institutions (“FIs”) seeking to comply with their own Customer Due Diligence (“CDD”) compliance obligations, which requires covered FIs to obtain BOI from many entity customers when they open up new accounts.
In regards to this NPRM, FinCEN’s declared goal is to ensure that
(1) only authorized recipients have access to BOI; (2) authorized recipients use that access only for purposes permitted by the CTA; and (3) authorized recipients only redisclose BOI in ways that balance protection of the security and confidentiality of the BOI with furtherance of the CTA’s objective of making BOI available to a range of users for purposes specified in the CTA.
Further, FinCEN has indicated that, “[c]oincident with the protocols described in this NPRM, FinCEN is working to develop a secure, non-public database in which to store BOI, using rigorous information security methods and controls typically used in the Federal government to protect non-classified yet sensitive information systems at the highest security levels.”
The comment period for the NPRM is 60 days. The NPRM proposes an effective date of January 1, 2024, consistent with when the final BOI reporting rule at 31 C.F.R. § 1010.380 becomes effective. The proposed BOI access regulations will be set forth separately at 31 C.F.R. § 1010.955, rather than existing 31 C.F.R. § 1010.950, which governs the disclosure of other Bank Secrecy Act (“BSA”) information.
This NPRM relates to the second of three sets of regulations which FinCEN ultimately will issue under the CTA. As we have blogged (here and here), FinCEN already has issued regulations regarding the BOI reporting obligation itself. FinCEN still must issue proposed regulations on “reconciling” the new BOI reporting regulations and the existing CDD regulations applicable to covered FIs for obtaining BOI from their own entity customers.
As we discuss, the lengthy NPRM suggests answers to some questions, but it of course also raises other questions. Although domestic and even foreign government agencies will have generally broad access to the BOI database, assuming that they satisfy various requirements, the NPRM’s proposed access for FIs to the BOI database is relatively limited.