The CFTC staff provided conditional no-action relief to a provisionally registered swap dealer bank with respect to activities outside of its London branch. The no-action letter provides relief from the CFTC's "transaction-level" requirements applicable to swaps, for transactions entered into by the bank out of its London branch with non-U.S. persons who are not "conduit affiliates" or guaranteed by U.S. persons. The relief only applies to swaps with counterparties located in a foreign jurisdiction for which the CFTC has not issued a substituted compliance determination. Among other conditions

In its Annual Review the NFA highlighted accomplishments in the 2015 fiscal year. The review, titled "Protection: That's Our Purpose" lists the following as accomplishments: (i) advances in cybersecurity measures, (ii) rebuilding critical systems, (iii) strengthening regulation and (iv) providing education. The report also details the NFA's finances in 2015.

The SEC Office of Investor Education and Advocacy issued an investor bulletin educating investors about variable annuities. The bulletin includes basic information about variable annuities and answers questions about investing and benefits.

The SEC extended a limited exemption from Rule 612 (Minimum Pricing Increment) of Regulation NMS. The exemption concerns the operation of NASDAQ OMX BX, Inc.'s Retail Price Improvement Program and allows certain quotes in increments of $0.001.

SIFMA summarized key findings from the Quantum Dawn 3 cybersecurity exercise held on September 16, 2015. In an effort to help companies learn to prepare for systemic cyber attacks, SIFMA published an "After-Action" report, in which it highlighted a number of positive developments, including: institutions were able to identify and leverage internal and external capabilities when responding to market-wide cyber attacks; more than 80 organizations built "muscle memory" into their crisis response by exercising distributed denial-of-service attack mitigation, domain-name-system attack coordination