Welcome to the Compliance Cohort. We are a group of compliance professionals working to make compliance easier. Our goal is to take complex compliance concepts and put them in simple terms that apply to the real world. We are glad you have found us and look forward to collaborating in the future.
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All in BSA
In this Compliance Clip, Adam discusses what FinCEN recommends for using as a title for the “filing name” of a Suspicious Activity Report. While most financial institutions probably figured this out over a decade ago, it’s important to make sure you are still following this guidance in your institution.
On May 20, 2022, the SEC announced charges against Wells Fargo Advisors for failing to file at least 34 Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) in a timely manner between April 2017 and October 2021. Wells Fargo Advisors, the St. Louis-based broker-dealer, has agreed to pay $7 million to settle the charges.
On May 13, 2022, the U.S. Department of the Treasury issued its 2022 National Strategy for Combatting Terrorist and Other Illicit Financing, which identifies measures to increase transparency in the U.S. financial system and strengthen the AML/CFT framework. The 2022 Strategy addresses the key risks from the 2022 National Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing, and Proliferation Financing risk assessments and reflects the challenges posed by a world impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic, the increasing digitization of financial services, and increasing levels of corruption and fraud.
In this Compliance Clip, Adam talks about how the section for politically exposed persons (PEPs) in the BSA Exam Manual was recently updated in December of 2021. While the regulators have said that the BSA Exam manual updates shouldn’t be anything new, the changes to the PEP section of the manual are quite interesting as it seems to back peddle from what was said in the 2014 edition. This video is a must watch for your BSA/AML team.
A Transcript of this video is now available.
FinCEN has updated its “SAR Filings by Industry” webpage to include data from 2021. In addition to this webpage, FinCEN has an interactive map and and Interactive SAR Stats which allow BSA professionals to analyze what types of suspicious activity are being reported in their areas. As this data allows specific sorting of the data, BSA professionals are able to sort by many different fields including primary regulator, county, etc.
On March 17, 2022, FinCEN announced that it has assessed a $140 million civil money penalty against USAA Federal Savings Bank (USAA FSB) for willful violations of the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) and its implementing regulations. This is after FinCEN conducted a civil enforcement investigation and determined that grounds exist to impose a Civil Money Penalty against USAA FSB for violations of the BSA. According to the FinCEN’s press release, USAA FSB admitted that it willfully failed to implement and maintain an anti‑money laundering (AML) program that met the minimum requirements of the BSA from at least January 2016 through April 2021.
On March 10, 2022, FinCEN issued a press release to inform U.S. financial institutions that the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an intergovernmental body that establishes international standards to combat money laundering, counter the financing of terrorism, and combat weapons of mass destruction proliferation financing (AML/CFT/CPF), has issued public statements updating its lists of jurisdictions with strategic AML/CFT/CPF deficiencies following its plenary meeting this month. U.S. financial institutions should consider the FATF’s stance toward these jurisdictions when reviewing their obligations and risk-based policies, procedures, and practices.
In this Compliance Clip (video), Adam discusses how to correct or amend a prior SAR filing through the BSA E-Filing system without a prior BSA ID. This short but sweet Compliance Clip is especially useful to those in-charge of filing FinCEN SARs. A transcript of this video is now available.
In this Compliance Clip (video), Adam talks about critical versus non-critical fields on FinCEN CTRs and SARs. Adam gets to the bottom line of when you are supposed to provide certain information on any FinCEN report. This is a BSA topic.
In early February, 2022, the Federal Reserve released a Synthetic Identity Fraud Mitigation Toolkit which offers a wide variety of informative resources for financial institutions, consumers and businesses on fraud mitigation. The issuance of the fraud mitigation toolkit is the next step in the Federal Reserve’s years-long commitment and engagement with fraud experts to support the payments industry in its battle against fraud.
