By Elyce Schweitzer, Esq., Regulatory Compliance Officer, Alliant National; and
Valerie J. Grandin, Esq., Sr. Underwriting Counsel Florida and Vice President, Alliant National
Mary Poppins’ famous line, “Just a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down,” simply does not work for compliance with FinCEN’s Residential Real Estate Rule (Final Rule). You can approach it with a good cup of coffee or tea by your side, along with your favorite tasty treat (did anyone say “lemon poppyseed cookie”?), but you can’t sugarcoat the truth of it. Collecting up to 111 data points and transcribing them into a complex reporting form promulgated by FinCEN is no easy feat. However, efforts are underway to make compliance with the Final Rule more understandable, bearable, and easier to achieve. How so, you may ask?
In our last blog about FinCEN’s Final Rule, we briefly described a comprehensive two-day ALTA FinCEN Bootcamp training session held on June 2 and 3, 2025. Now we’re going to go a bit more in-depth with our coverage.
Over the course of those two days, numerous speakers presented a variety of topics geared at providing background information, operationalizing advice, implementation requirements, and training materials for compliance with the Final Rule:
- Overview of Bank Secrecy Act (And Usefulness Of The Data Collected Under It)
- Money Laundering and Real Estate
- Real Life Examples Of Bad Actors Using Real Estate For Money Laundering; Resulting Real Estate Forfeitures And Treasury Auctions
- 411 on FinCEN Residential Real Estate Rule (31 CFR 1031.320(b))
- Who, What, When & How to Determine A Reportable Transaction
- Expectations for Training, Reporting, and Record-keeping Costs
- Penalties for Non-compliance (Civil & Criminal)
- FAQs
- Suggested Contractual Language for Residential Purchase Contracts
- Suggested Schedule B-1 Commitment Language
- Current Industry Lawsuits Against FinCEN
- The Rule in Action (Hypothetical Scenarios)
- How to Train Your Customers (Providing A Sample PowerPoint presentation For A “Lunch & Learn” That Can Be Branded And Used By ALTA Members)
- The Collecting Is The Hardest Part (Data Points and Information Collection Forms)
- Fun with Filing (How To Do It – Using The BSA-EFiling System)
- Review Of “Who” Files per the Rule (i.e. The “Waterfall Cascade”)
- Designation Agreements For Someone Else to File
- Registration For EFiling
- System Requirements
- Volume Of Covered Transactions
- Training Your Staff
- Selecting Subject Matter Expert (SME) Employees
- Resources (FAQs, Published Rule)
- Workflow Considerations
- Record Retention And Storage
- Staff Impact; Company Communications; Training for the Reporting Person
- Money Laundering and Real Estate
As you can see from the list above, there is a LOT to learn and do in order to prepare for the Final Rule’s impending effective date of December 1, 2025. Discussions about the new Buyer and Seller Information Collection Forms developed by ALTA were incorporated into the training. These are complex forms intended to help the buyer’s and seller’s representatives provide all of the required data that will ultimately be included in the report to be filed through the BSA EFiling network. To access these forms via the hyperlinks provided, you must be logged into the ALTA website; these forms are available to ALTA members and to those who obtain a license to use ALTA’s policy forms. At the end of each form is a certification page for the seller’s and buyer’s representatives to sign, certifying to the completeness and accuracy of the information provided. We anticipate that these forms will be widely used across the industry, so it is important to understand and be familiar with them.
The idea behind the training is that if the rule, the requirements and the process are understood by all key stakeholders – including the real estate sales agents as well their customers – then securing their cooperation for data acquisition will be much easier for the closing agent charged with reporting to FinCEN. The ALTA Bootcamp segment entitled “How to Train Your Customers” is tailored to educate everyone about the law and what they need to do to comply. For those of you who did not attend the Bootcamp, or who want a refresher, Alliant National plans to provide its own training to real estate sales agents toward the end of the summer and you are welcome to attend.
We have developed an Alliant National branded presentation, which you can also co-brand with your agency’s name, for you to offer to customers and real estate professionals. In addition, we will be offering a deep dive into the Final Rule starting in late summer or early fall presented by the Alliant National underwriting and education teams. This training will help you identify reportable transactions, understand available exemptions to the rule and navigate potential pitfalls which could result in non-compliance and potential penalties. The goal of this presentation will be to train our agents to be experts on the Final Rule well in advance of its December 1, 2025, effective date. In the interim, we encourage you to monitor industry and Alliant National publications on FinCEN, review FinCEN FAQs currently available, https://www.fincen.gov/boi-faqs, practice a dry run into the BSA Efiling Network, https://boir.org/, and speak to your production software vendor about their plans for an integrated filing process. It is never too early to start the process regarding the Final Rule.
