I thought I'd give everyone a heads up on something I learned in the last week. We are a multibank holding company with MLOs employed by several affiliate banks. While I was in the process of requesting the accounts for each affiliate, I noticed on the Company Account Request instructions the following relating to who can be an Account Administrators.

[i]Identifying Account Administrators. The Account Administrators for your company are the persons of your company’s choosing that will have full access to your company’s record on the NMLS and will be able to fill out and submit a complete company record (Form MU1 or MU1R) to any participating state mortgage regulator or the Federal Registry. The Account Administrators for your company record will also be able to view information about individuals and mortgage loan originator who have granted your company access to their NMLS record. This access carries important responsibilities under the [Industry User Agreement] for which your company will be liable.

Note: Institutions requesting access to the Federal Registry are subject to federal restrictions regarding who is allowed to access and view criminal background check information. To ensure compliance with these restrictions, only employees of a federally chartered or insured institution can act as Account Administrators and only Account Administrators for the federal agency-regulated parent institution can be identified as Account Administrators for a subsidiary of that institution.[/i]

Well guess what...our HR folks who were going to be AAs are holding company employees. ARGH!

FWIW, I did confirm the above with one of our regulators. He also told me that you can't have an AAs be administrators for banks that they are not employed under. So an AA employed by Bank A, can't be administrator for Bank B.

Just thought I'd pass this tidbit along since I didn't see this information anywhere within the regulation. I would be interested to know if anyone else has run into this issue.

Very interesting. Thanks! Many admin folks are "holding company" so this can put a crimp in plans.

It has definitely put a crimp in our plan!

Yes, I do know this to be true also. Even before the SAFE Act, we have been fingerprinting our employees and performing backgroud checks as part of employment. We too are holding company personnel that perform these checks and went around the same issues at the time we put this into place. However, the CFO and myself are officers of the bank also, so that gives us the advantage to perform such and under SAFE Act be the Admins.

I just wanted to share this that I found on the FBI's website. It looks like you will be okay if Holding Company personeel receive and are able to view Background Checks if those individuals are involved in the human resouce decisions of the banking instutuion held by the company.
See the below link.
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/fingerprints_biometrics/checks-of-bank-employees

Shopgirl, this addresses reviewing and requiring backgound checks in general, outside of the NMLS Registry. It doesn't address those requirements that mandate that individuals acting as Administrators of the Registry for a parent institution and subisdiary institutions must be employees of the federal agency-regulated parent institution.