The Federal Reserve Board and the Securities and Exchange Commission have jointly published the Small Entity Compliance Guide for Regulation R.

After much wrangling between the SEC and the banking industry, Congress mandated that the Fed join the SEC in drafting the rule. In September 2007, the two agencies finally agreed on a final regulation, which implements certain of the key exceptions for banks from the definition of the term “broker” under Section 3(a)(4) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.

The five-page guide provides a section-by-section summary of the regulation and cautions that any bank that wants to rely on one of the exceptions to the broker definition should “review and understand the terms, limits and conditions to the particular exception or exemption.”