FinCEN guide lists rules for some financial institutions’ access to BOI

Treasury’ Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) released a guide for rules regarding access to beneficial ownership information (BOI) by some financial institutions, including rules regarding customer consent.

The rules in the Small Entity Compliance Guide apply to access for certain categories of financial institutions, as defined by 31 CFR Section 1010.100(t), with obligations under the current customer due diligence rule, FinCEN said. Because of FinCEN’s phased-in approach to providing access to BOI, financial institutions do not yet have that access, and some will be part of the final group to gain access, FinCEN said.

Financial institutions must gain the customer’s consent to request their BOI from FinCEN, the rules state. However, consent needs to be gained only once, allowing financial institutions to retrieve BOI even from additional accounts for the same reporting company. Also, consent is not required to be in writing.

Financial institutions can choose their own rules for obtaining and documenting consent and for revocation or expiration of consent. The documentation of the consent must be maintained for five years after it was used to make a BOI request to FinCEN.

The rules about customer consent are included in the guide’s section on security and confidentiality requirements. The guide also covers authorized use of BOI, administration of requests, and violations.

As of Jan. 1, most companies created in or registered to do business in the United States must report information about their beneficial owners to FinCEN as part of an anti-money-laundering initiative enacted through the Corporate Transparency Act, P.L. 116-283, in 2021. The requirement applies to an estimated 32.6 million companies, FinCEN officials have said, with about 5 million initial reports filed annually after that.

FinCEN issued final rules on access to BOI in December 2023.

— To comment on this article or to suggest an idea for another article, contact Martha Waggoner at Martha.Waggoner@aicpa-cima.com.