Regulatory Agencies Finalize Changes to Covered Fund Provisions of the Volcker Rule

 

On July 31, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (FRB), the U.S. CFTC, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) published a final rule amending the regulations that implement Section 13 of the Bank Holding Company Act (the “BHC Act”), commonly known as the Volcker Rule. The final rule, which goes into effect on October 1, is intended to improve and streamline the covered fund provisions of Section 13 of the BHC Act. The final rule aims to accomplish this by, among other things, permitting the following activities: qualifying foreign excluded funds; revising the exclusions from the definition of “covered fund” for foreign public funds, loan securitizations, public welfare investments, and small business investment companies; creating new exclusions from the definition of covered fund for credit funds, qualifying venture capital funds, family wealth management vehicles, and customer facilitation vehicles; modifying the definition of “ownership interest”; and providing that certain investments made in parallel with a covered fund, as well as certain restricted profit interests held by an employee or director, need not be included in a banking entity’s calculation of its ownership interest in the covered fund. OCC Bulletin. Federal Register Final Rule.