"There are a number of hurdles for financial institutions to jump in the next few years, starting in July 2014 when new account due diligence begins. By the end of 2014 remediation on the first type of existing entities must be completed. The first kinds of reporting, such as tax return reporting, will be required in 2015, with this expanding the following year. Withholding also begins in 2014 and will be expanded in 2017, including for pass-through payments," reports IBS Intelligence in its October 2013 Wealth Management Supplement.

If a country's government body has not signed an Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA) with the US, the burden is on the individual banks to implement changes to their systems and processes in order to comply with regulations. One such country is Lebanon where foreign banks and their related entities, including Fransabank, BLC Bank, BSL Bank, Lebanese Swiss Bank and Creditbank, have selected Capital Compliance FATCA Module with its support across all parts of the Act -- customer identification, reporting and calculation of the withholding tax.

"At Creditbank, we maintain a strong commitment to our account holders for full compliance with FATCA and therefore selected Capital Compliance's FATCA module for its robust set of capabilities. The solution will help us with information gathering of all the data necessary to identify US entities, generating alerts and workflow between the Compliance Officer and Relationship Manager, maintaining an audit trail, and providing the necessary reporting to authorities," says Georges Mrad, Head of IT Department, Creditbank.