Compliance Blog

Written by Michael Coleman, Regulatory Compliance Counsel

On April 30th, the CFPB issued its latest final rule on remittance transfers. Most importantly, this final rule set the effective date of the remittance transfer final rule(s) as October 28th, 2013. Meaning, the entirety of the remittance transfer rule, including all of the previous final rules, are effective October 28th, 2013. 

This latest final rule also amended several other disclosure requirements and error resolution requirements from the previous remittance transfer final rule(s), here is an excerpt from the preamble: 

"The amendments address three specific issues. First, the 2013 Final Rule 
modifies the 2012 Final Rule to make optional, in certain circumstances, the requirement to 
disclose fees imposed by a designated recipient’s institution. Second and relatedly, the 2013 
Final Rule also makes optional the requirement to disclose taxes collected by a person other than 
the remittance transfer provider. In place of these two former requirements, the 2013 Final Rule 
requires disclaimers to be added to the rule’s disclosures indicating that the recipient may receive 
less than the disclosed total due to the fees and taxes for which disclosure is now optional. 
Finally, the 2013 Final Rule revises the error resolution provisions that apply when a remittance 
transfer is not delivered to a designated recipient because the sender provided incorrect or 
insufficient information, and, in particular, when a sender provides an incorrect account number
or recipient institution identifier that results in the transferred funds being deposited in the wrong 
account." 

As always, the best place to look for the nitty gritty details of these amendments is going to be the regulation itself, you can find the amended regulatory text here, and the amended official commentary here. This final rule has not been posted in the Federal Register yet, but when it has you should be able to find it as published in the Federal Register on the CFPB's webpage for the remittance transfer rule. Also, don't forget the categories listed on the right side of the blog, you can click "Remittances" to see all our recent posts on the topic, including this post which provides a nice list of resources on the remittance transfer final rules.  

NAFCU's Final Regulation on 2013 Remittances Final Rule. Confused yet? Don't worry, you are not alone, this rule has been an extremely difficult rulemaking process to follow. NAFCU’s Regulatory Affairs Team has prepared a Final Regulation, 13-EF-07, on the 2013 Remittances final rule. It is available for download here (NAFCU login required). Also, the Regulatory Affairs team is working on a comprehensive guide for all the remittance transfer final rules. Stay tuned.