Compliance Blog

The electronic Code of Federal Regulations (eCFR) is changing! Some of you may have seen this banner when scrolling though www.ecfr.gov:

That’s right, sometime between now and the end of summer, the electronic Code of Federal Regulations will be undergoing some big changes. This blog is going to be discussing a number of changes that compliance professionals may want to note.

For those of you who are worried about navigating the new eCFR, the website has a useful link to a "Getting Started" guide right on the home page of the website:

For those of you who do not know what the Code of Federal Regulations is, the guide provides the following explanation:

“The Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) is the codification of the general and permanent rules published in the Federal Register by the departments and agencies of the Federal Government. It is divided into 50 titles representing broad areas subject to federal regulation.”

According to the guide, there are three main ways of viewing the Code of Federal Regulations: “table of contents views, content views, and viewing changes across time.”

Table of Contents and Contents Views

When you first enter the eCFR you’ll see the below table of contents. I have highlighted Title 12, as that is where both the NCUA’s (Chapter VII) and the CFPB’s (Chapter X) regulations can be found.

 Once you click your way to the NCUA’s regulations, you should see this:

From this page, you can take two different paths forward. If you click “Part 701,” the website will take you to a table of contents for Part 701. However, if you click “Organization and Operation of Federal Credit Unions, ” the website will take you to the content view of the entire text of Part 701:

In order to view a single individual section within a regulation, such as section 701.2, you would need to navigate to the table of contents view for Part 701, as described above. From the table of contents view (pictured below), all you would need to do is click the title of the section, “Federal credit union bylaws.”

Compliance professionals should also note that the new eCFR permits copying citations and url links to specific subsections. For example, if you hover your mouse over the (a) in Section 701.2, the following popup will appear:

Copy citation will copy the citation and copy url will copy the url. You can use this to more easily create citations with helpful hyperlinks such as this one: 12 CFR 701.2(a).

Change View

A useful addition to the new eCFR is the change view. According to the getting started guide, “[c]hange views (also known as diff views) allow you to compare changes to eCFR content across time.” This can be found in the left side vertical bar when you are in content view.

Clicking timeline will show you the following:

This view shows the dates that changes were made to the regulation, a link to view the regulation as of that date, a link to review the specific changes that were made on that date, and the ability to compare the changes to the most recent version of the regulation or section. For example, Appendix B to Part 741 has recently undergone some major changes. Comparing the current version of the appendix with the previous versions shows what is similar to track changes in word:

This view can help a credit union better understand changes to regulations and how those changes may affect a credit union’s policies and procedures.

Subscribe

Finally, another useful new feature is the subscribe feature. The subscribe feature allows you to sign up for notifications when a regulation or section are updated. This ensures that your credit union doesn’t miss any changes and is able to update its procedures and policies accordingly. To subscribe you need to be logged into your account and click the subscribe button in the left side vertical bar.

Please keep in mind that changes are still being implemented for the new eCFR and new features may still be added. However, now may be a good time to familiarize yourself with the new layout before the change becomes formalized.