On March 20, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission approved a final rule under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act by a vote of four to one (Commissioner O’Malia, dissenting). The final rule, which was originally proposed through four separate rule filings, addresses three areas: customer clearing documentation, time frames for submission and acceptance for clearing, and clearing member risk management for swap transactions.

Customer Clearing Documentation: The customer clearing documentation portion of the final rule prohibits provisions in customer agreements that would disclose to a futures commission merchant (FCM), swap dealer (SD) or major swap participant (MSP) the identity of a customer’s original executing counterparty; limit the number of counterparties with whom a customer may enter into a trade; restrict the size of the position a customer may take with any individual counterparty (apart from an overall credit limit across all of the customer’s positions); impair a customer’s access to execution of a trade on terms that have a reasonable relationship to the best terms available; or prevent compliance with specified time frames for acceptance of trades into clearing.