Board on Professional Responsibility

Rule 1.15 of the District of Columbia Rules of Professional Conduct, as amended on August 1, 2010, requires that all trust funds be kept in an “approved depository,” and that trust funds that are nominal in amount or expected to be held for a short period of time be held in an approved depository in compliance with the District of Columbia’s Interest on Lawyers Trust Account (“IOLTA”) program. To be an approved depository, D.C. Bar R. XI, § 20 requires a financial institution to file an undertaking with the Board on Professional Responsibility agreeing (i) to report to Disciplinary Counsel overdrafts or other irregularities in trust accounts and to respond to subpoenas from Disciplinary Counsel and (ii) for financial institutions that elect to offer IOLTA trust accounts, to pay interest and charge fees on IOLTA accounts that are comparable to non-IOLTA accounts and to submit the interest and periodic reports to the D.C. Bar Foundation, which administers the IOLTA program.

NOTICE: Lawyers should be aware that in some instances, bank branches located outside the District of Columbia have not opened DC IOLTA accounts correctly. This is because these branches may treat the accounts as belonging to the state where the branch is located instead of as DC IOLTA accounts. Lawyers may wish to confirm that the branch bank is properly opening the accounts as DC IOLTA accounts and not as IOLTA accounts in the state where the branch is located. For questions about opening DC IOLTA accounts, contact the D.C. Bar Foundation at 202-467-3750 or Dan Mills, assistant director, D.C. Bar Practice Management Advisory Service, at 202-737-4700, ext. 3212 or [email protected].

The following financial institutions have filed the requisite Trust Account Notification Undertaking with the Board on Professional Responsibility and are certified as approved institutions for Trust Accounts and IOLTA Trust Accounts:

• Access National Bank
• Amalgamated Bank
• Bank of America
• BankUnited, N.A.
• Branch Banking and Trust (now known as Truist)
• Capital Bank, N.A.
• Capital One Bank
• Cardinal Bank
• Chain Bridge Bank, N.A.
• Citibank, N.A.
• City First Bank of D.C.
• City National Bank
• Colombo Bank
• Comerica Bank
• Congressional Bank
• Eagle Bank
• Esquire Bank
• First National Bank
• Founders Bank
• HSBC Bank USA, N.A.
• The Huntington National Bank
• Industrial Bank
• John Marshall Bank
• JP Morgan Chase Bank, N.A.
• Liberty Bank and Trust Company
• Main Street Bank
• M&T Bank
• Monument Bank
• MVB Bank
• The National Capital Bank of Washington
• Old Dominion National Bank
• Old Line Bank
• PNC Bank
• Peoples Bank
• Premier Bank, Inc.
• Presidential Bank, FSB
• Sandy Spring Bank
• Santander Bank
• SunTrust
• TD Bank
• Truist
• Trustar Bank
• United Bank
• United States Senate Federal Credit Union
• Washington First Bank
• Wells Fargo Bank, N.A.