The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has unanimously approved final amendments clarifying and simplifying its regulations governing chief compliance officer (CCO) duties and annual compliance reporting requirements for futures commission merchants (FCM), swap dealers and major swap participants.

  
“The Commission’s approval of these amendments demonstrates our commitment to efficient and effective regulation,” says CFTC Chairman J Christopher Giancarlo (pictured). “Over the last year, rules and regulations have been re-evaluated to ensure they are not overly burdensome, while maintaining or improving their overall effectiveness.”   
 
The amendments clarify a CCO’s duties by providing reasonable standards and guidance on effective compliance. The amendments also modify the CCO annual report content and submission requirements to reduce report preparation burdens while also making the reports more effective. By adopting these amendments, the CFTC is also further synchronising the CCO regulations with the comparable regulations adopted by the Securities and Exchange Commission for security-based swap dealers. The further convergence of the two regimes will allow greater efficiencies for the market intermediaries registered with both agencies.
 
The action is consistent with Giancarlo’s Project KISS, an agency-wide initiative to adopt appropriate changes and simplify agency rules, regulations and practices to make them efficient and less burdensome.