ALTA Suppports Federal Federal Court Challenge to FinCEN Rules – Hearing Set

ALTA filed an amicus brief on Sept. 2 supporting Fidelity National Financial’s motion for summary judgment in its challenge to the FinCEN's Anti-Money Laundering (AML) rule for residential real estate transactions. 

In the brief, ALTA argues the rule will impose crippling compliance costs on small title companies, while offering only speculative law enforcement benefits. The rule is set to go into effect Dec. 1. The federal court has set September 17th as the date for the federal government to file its response, and scheduled the oral argument on Fidelity’s motion for September 30th.  

ALTA’s brief provides the court with a deeper understanding of the title industry as a whole and the impact of the rule on small business. It augments Fidelity’s argument that FinCEN acted arbitrarily and capriciously in finalizing the rule because it didn’t consider all the likely costs that the title industry will bear in complying with the rule. 
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The ALTA brief further criticized FinCEN for ignoring cybersecurity risks tied to storing highly sensitive BOI, brushing off industry concerns, and assigning arbitrary dollar values to justify the regulation. ALTA also pointed out that existing regulations such as the Customer Due Diligence (CDD) rule for banks already capture much of the same BOI that FinCEN seeks, making the new requirements duplicative and unnecessary. Even FinCEN itself has recently admitted that BOI reporting provides only “marginal” benefits. ALTA’s brief focuses on highlighting the additional costs that FinCEN didn’t consider.