News

U.S. financial institutions still struggle to apply the Treasury Department's customer due-diligence rule when handling initial public offerings and other complex corporate transactions, according to compliance officers and attorneys. Since May 11, the department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, has required lenders to obtain identifying information for any individual who owns at least 25 percent of a legal entity that opens a new account, and take similar steps to identify one person responsible for managing the firm's daily operations. But determining what qualifies as an account, much less who holds it, remains complicated in the context of loan underwriting,...