No-action relief for non-U.S. persons that are neither guaranteed affiliates nor conduit affiliates of a U.S. person from the requirement to count swaps with international financial institutions towards the de minimis thresholds for the swap dealer and major swap participant definitions.  

An insurance company requested no-action relief from the Division, in order to allow the company to provide reinsurance of pension plans’ longevity risks through multi-step “Interposed Longevity Reinsurance Transactions,” without such reinsurance being considered as insurance or a guarantee of a swap. Based on the company’s specific fact pattern, the Division found that the use of derivatives in the Interposed Longevity Reinsurance Transaction serves merely as a conduit for longevity risk coverage and payments made pursuant to a bona fide reinsurance transaction.

The Division of Swap Dealer and Intermediary Oversight issued an interpretative letter that clarifies, in light of the recent vacatur of the position limits rule, the scope of the bona fide hedging exemption from the trading thresholds as applied to the operators of registered investment companies pursuant to Regulation 4.5.

The Division of Clearing and Intermediary Oversight provided an Interpretation that a software vendor would not be an introducing broker (“IB”) as defined in Commodity Exchange Act Section 1a(23) and Commission Regulation 1.3(mm) as a result of providing its customers a software application with the ability to route orders for the purchase or sale of commodity futures and options contracts to a futures commission merchant (“FCM”) or IB of their choice.