Newsroom

Crowdfunding portals would be subject to the same Bank Secrecy Act rules as broker-dealers under a Financial Crimes Enforcement Network proposed rule published in Monday's Federal Register.

The proposal is FinCEN's attempt to further curb money laundering, terrorist financing and other financial crimes.

Crowdfunding portals, FinCEN says, "raise at least the same degree of [anti-money laundering] and counter financing of terrorism risk as some other broker-dealers registered with the [Securities and Exchange Commission], and should be regulated commensurately under the BSA."

It adds that because the BSA "and its implementing rules are risk-based, we expect that funding portals would design programs commensurate with their limited business model and not the more comprehensive programs established by full service broker-dealers."

SEC recently finalized a crowdfunding rule exempting funding portals from having to register as brokers or dealers in securities and determined that other regulators should be involved in developing effective AML requirements for funding portals.

Comments on this proposal are due by June 3.