We have a loan customer that has an ownership of 34.50% in his business. The other owners have 24.25% and 41.25% ownership. Should this number be rounded up/down as the vendor only allows whole numbers? TIA!

Since you are not required to record the percentage of ownership, you can make your own rules.

Regardless of your vendors logistics, I wouldn't force the 24.25% owner up to 25% as they don't own 25%. You could, but why would you want to? If I had to round something to make the vendor's form work, I would round the 34.5% up and the other two down, but probably also make a note somewhere in the file explaining this.

Our vendor also only accepts whole numbers, and the input to core will create Appendix A. We will have to play with this scenario, hope we don't run into it often! Whatever rules you create they should not trigger or un-trigger the requirement for a BO.

So, if you have a BO with 24.75% ownership, you wouldn't want to round up.

I can't really think of a scenario where you would round up. I would not try to make it equal 100% if you have to round anyone.

What if you just consistently dropped any fractions of a percent and did not require 100%?

Not sure I understand. We're required to freeze or block funds going/coming from SDNs. If we say, "he only has 21.5% ownership" how does that translate to compliance? We also don't know whether or not the SDN is receiving benefit behind the scenes.

This is interesting! Daisy Doodle - I see your point and rounding up 24.50% could make them appear to have a 25% ownership when they don't. Dropping any fractions seems practical... And I hope that this is a one time thing and we will document somewhere.

398. Does OFAC consider entities over which one or more blocked persons exercise control, but do not own 50 percent or more of, to be blocked pursuant to OFAC’s 50 Percent Rule?

No. OFAC's 50 Percent Rule speaks only to ownership and not to control. An entity that is controlled (but not owned 50 percent or more) by one or more blocked persons is not considered automatically blocked pursuant to OFAC's 50 Percent Rule.

To say the same thing Adam did differently: "Does an individual own 25% or more of this legal entity?" is a question requiring only a "Yes" or "No" response. As the form does not require a percentage, it certainly does not require that all of the percentages listed must total 100%

From another current thread:

I agree completely. While listing the % is fine to do, it seems to over complicate things for many. The rule really shouldn't be that hard as all that needs done is for the customer to tell you if anyone (directly or indirectly) owns more than 25%. Yes or No. That's it.

Regarding OFAC, I'm of the management philosophy to just run OFAC on all listed BO's and don't worry about the %. It is just easier to manage that way - at least from my perspective.

Ditto.

We are not collecting ownership %. We believe it makes it more complicated and not required by the rule. We did a webinar yesterday with our Core and they did some poling questions. One of them if we were collecting%. This was their 7th webinar and the answer has been pretty consistent through all of them being 50/50.