Investment commission compensa- tion. For purposes of this paragraph (a), a service provider earning investment commission compensation is treated as providing the services to which such compensation relates over the 12 months preceding the date as of which the overall value of the assets or asset accounts is determined for purposes of the calculation of the investment com- mission compensation. For purposes of this paragraph (a)(12), the term invest- ment commission compensation means the compensation or the portion of compensation earned by a service pro- vider if a substantial portion of the services provided by such service pro- vider to a service recipient to which such compensation relates consists of sales of financial products or other di- rect customer services to an unrelated customer with respect to customer as- sets or customer asset accounts, the customer retains the right to termi- nate the customer relationship and may move or liquidate the assets or asset accounts without undue delay (which may be subject to a reasonable notice period), such compensation con- sists of a portion of the value of the overall assets or asset account balance, an amount substantially all of which is calculated by reference to the increase in the value of the overall assets or ac- count balance during a specified pe- riod, or both, and the value of the over- all assets or account balance and in- vestment commission compensation is determined at least annually. For this purpose, a customer is treated as an unrelated customer only if the cus- tomer is not related to either the serv- ice provider or the service recipient. A person is treated as related to another person if the person would be treated as related to the other person under § 1.409A–1(f)(2)(ii) or the person would be treated as providing management services to the other person under § 1.409A–1(f)(2)(iv).
